Line 6 Bass POD Pro User Manual

Pilot’s Handbook

An in-depth exploration of the revolutionary technologies and pulsing tonal pleasures that power your Bass POD Pro, plus the insider information on its optional companion Line 6 foot controllers – the

Floor Board

and

FB4

Electrophonic version available at www.line6.com and on accompanying CD. Revision A.

PRO

THE BASS RECORDING & LIVE SOUND SOLUTION

BASS POD

DIGITAL SYNC

44.1KHz 48 KHz EXTERNAL

S/H

19 18

DANISH DRIVER

BASS SYNTH

S/H + DRIVER

S/H + FLANGER

12' s

TRON UP

TRON DOWN

GRAY FLANGER

ORANGE PHASE

CABS

AND EQ

MIDI

TO D.I.

APPLY FX

TUNER

MANUAL SAVE

BRIT CLASS A

SILVER PANEL

BRIT SUPER

BRIT MAJOR

LINE INPUT BASS INPUT

LARGE PIE

PIG FOOT

RODENT

BYPASS

(CAB SELECT)

10' s

OCTAVE DOWN

ANALOG CHORUS

DANISH CHORUS

TWEAKCOMPRESS

EFFECT

VOLUME

CHANNEL

15 16 17

MOTOR CITY

FLIP TOP

DRIVE BASS MIDDLE TREBLE OUTPUT

SUB DUB

INPUT CLIP

SIGNAL

EFFECT SETUPS

Effect Tweak Notes

Bypass n/a Turns off the effects

Octave Down Mix modeled after Boss OC-2

Analog Chorus Range of choruses modeled after Roland CE-1

(MIDDLE SWEEP)(FX LO-CUT)(EQ)(DIG OUT LEVEL) (EQ) (NOISE GATE)(EQ)(CABS AND EQ FUNCTIONS)

010010

Eden “David” 4x10

Cabinet Model Based on:

Cabs with 10" Speakers 1979 Ampeg SVT 8X10 Cab

SWR “Goliath II” 4x10

010 010

30Hz 8 KHz OFF 1 KHz+12 OFF ON+0 B +24 B -

CAB MODELS

Danish Chorus Range of choruses modeled after t.c. electronics Chorus/Flanger

Orange Phase Speed modeled after MXR Phase 90

Gray Flanger Range of choruses modeled after MXR Flanger

Tron Down Filter Peak modeled after Mu-Tron III in the “down” position

Tron Up Filter Peak modeled after Mu-Tron III in the “up” position

S/H Speed modeled after Oberheim Voltage Controlled Filter (sample & hold effect)

Hartke 4x10

1968 Marshall 4x12 with “pre-Rola” 25’s

Polytone 1x15 closed back combo

Vox AC-100 2x15

Cabs with 12" Speakers 60’s Versatone Pan-O-Flex 1x12

Cabs with 15" Speakers Ampeg B-15 1x15 closed back combo

S/H + Flanger S/H Speed Sample & Hold meets the Gray Flanger

S/H + Driver S/H Speed Sample & Hold meets the Danish Driver

Bass Synth Decay Inspired by the Boss Bass Synth plus a little extra attitude

Danish Driver Distortion modeled after t.c. electronics Booster Line Driver + Distortion

Large Pie Distortion modeled after Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi

Pig Foot Distortion modeled after Hogs Foot

Rodent Distortion modeled after Pro-co Rat

Mesa/Boogie 2x15 (front loaded and front ported)

Fender Bassman 2x15 with JBL’s

1969 Marshall Major 4x15 cab (Yeah, Baby!)

Sunn Coliseum 8028 cab (1x18 + 1x12)

Acoustic 360 cab (1x18 in special folded horn enclosure)

Cabs with 18" Speakers SWR 1x18

25 2627

AMP MODELS EFFECTS / CABS

BASS POD PRO FRONT PANEL

REDUCED SIZE BACK COVER FOLDOUT FOR ELECTROPHONIC PILOT'S GUIDE

ROCK CLASSIC

AMP 360

STADIUM

EIGHTIES

POWER

CALIFORNIA

JAZZ TONE

ADAM & EVE

TUBE PREAMP

SESSION

PHONES BASS INPUT

4 2

AMP MODELS

Amp Model Based on:

Session 1987 SWR SM-400

California 1989 Mesa/Boogie Bass 400+

Jazz Tone 70’s Polytone Mini Brute

Adam & Eve Eden WT-300 (The Traveller)

Eighties Gallien-Krueger 800RB

Staduim Sunn Coliseum 300

Amp 360 Acoustic 360

Rock Classic 1974 Ampeg SVT

Brit Major 1969 Marshall Major

Brit Super 1968 Marshall Super Bass “Plexi”

SIlver Panel 1967 Fender “Silverface” Bassman Amp

Brit Class A 1965 Vox AC-100

Motor City 60’s Versatone Pan-O-Flex

Flip Top 60’s Ampeg B-15

Sub Dub When it's time to get ultra-low....

Tube Preamp Tube-based instrument preamp

FLEXTONE: TAP LIT BUTTON FOR TAP TEMPO / HOLD LIT BUTTON FOR MANUAL

* Fender, Marshall, Vox, and other amplifier and effect models are all trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with Line 6. These trademarks of other manufacturers are used solely for the purpose of describing certain amplifier and effect tones produced using Line 6's modeling technology.

Line 6's modeling technology provides POD with a wide variety of sounds and effects modeled after some of the most popular sounds of these classic amps. Line 6, POD, Bass POD, Floor Board, the Line 6 logo, the POD logo, and the Bass POD logo are trademarks of Line 6, Inc.

More great sounds for your Bass POD will soon be available at www.line6.com

Working Man – Rock Classic with Compression (a la Working Man by Rush)

Hip Hop – Sub Dub with 1X18 Cab and Compression (a la Massive Attack and Dr. Dre) C Synth – Tube Preamp with Bass Synth and Compression D R&B – Motor City with Compression

BANK 1BANK 2BANK 3BANK 4BANK 5BANK 6BANK 7BANK 8BANK 9

A Sleepless In Seattle – Silver Face with heavy Analog Chorus (a la Come As You Are by Nirvana) B Major Sunshine – Brit Major, 4X12 Cab and Octave Down (a la Sunshine of Your Love by Cream) C Brit Super – with Compression (a la Fire by Jimi Hendrix) D Funk – with Tron Down and Compression (a la Bootsy Collins)

A Session – with light Compression and Danish Chorus B Wicked Garden – Adam & Eve with Gray Flanger and Compression (a la Tool) C Deep Goo – Flip Top with cab modeled after Versatone 1X12 plus S/H + Driver with Compression D Chili – California with Tron Up and Compression (a la Higher Ground by Red Hot Chili Peppers)

A Eighties – with Danish Chorus (the sound of 80’s Metal) B Stadium – with full Large Pie (a la Smashing Pumpkins) C Class Trip – Brit Class A with Compression (a la Day Tripper by The Beatles) D Major Jones – Brit Major w/ mid boost and Compression (a la Whole Lotta Love by John Paul Jones)

A Growling Mids – Rock Classic with mid boost and Compression (a la New Year's Day by U2) B Mean Motor City – Motor City with everything on 10 C Sub Dub Fuzz – with full Drive and Compression D Moody Monk – Jazz Tone with light Analog Chorus (a la Monk's Mood by Thelonious Monk)

A Rock Classic – modeled after a 1974 Ampeg SVT B Brit Major – modeled after a 1969 Marshall Major C Brit Super – modeled after a 1968 Marshall Super Bass “Plexi” D Silver Panel – modeled after a 1967 Fender Bassman Head

A Brit Class A – modeled after a 1965 Vox AC-100 B Motor City – modeled after a 60’s Versatone Pan-O-Flex C Flip Top – modeled after a 1960’s Ampeg B-15 D Sub Dub – Lo-fi goodness perfect for Electronica, Dance, Hip Hop and more...

A Tube Preamp – for direct recording of non-bass instruments B Session – modeled after an SWR SM-400 C California – modeled after a Mesa Boogie Bass 400+ D Jazz Tone – modeled after a Polytone Mini Brute

A Adam & Eve – modeled after an Eden Traveler WT-300 B Eighties – modeled after a Gallien Krueger 800 RB C Stadium – modeled after a Sunn Coliseum

Fender, Marshall, Vox, and other amplifier model designations, and the names of musical artists, song titles and

groups, and effects, are all trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with

Line 6. These marks and names are used solely for the purpose of describing certain amplifier tones produced using

Line 6’s modeling technology. The Line 6 modeling technology provides Bass POD with a wide variety of sounds and

effects modeled after some of the most popular sounds of the classic amps, effects, and artists mentioned here.

D Amp 360 – modeled after an Acoustic 360

Rev A

The serial number can be found on the back panel of your Bass POD Pro. Please note it here for future reference:

SERIAL NO:

WARNING:

electric shock, do not expose this appliance to rain or moisture.

CAUTION:

pursuant to Part 15 of FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) This device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.

The lightning symbol within a triangle means “electrical caution!” It indicates the presence of information about operating voltage and potential risks of electrical shock.

Bass POD Pro Pilot’s Handbook © 2000, Line 6, Inc. Line 6, POD, POD Pro, Bass POD, Bass POD Pro, Flextone, Floor Board, FB4, AX2, and Amp Farm are trademarks of Line 6, Inc. All other product trademarks are property of their respective owners.

YOU

To reduce the risk of ﬁre or

This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B digital device

CAUTION:

do not remove screws. No user-serviceable parts inside. Refer servicing to qualiﬁed service personnel.

To reduce the risk of ﬁre or electric shock,

The exclamation point within a triangle means “caution!” Please read the information next to all caution signs.

SHOULD READ THESE IMPORTANT SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS

EEP THESE INSTRUCTIONS IN A SAFE PLACE

Before using your Bass POD Pro, be sure to carefully read the applicable

items of these operating instructions and the safety suggestions.

1. Obey all warnings on the Bass POD Pro and in this Pilot’s Handbook.

2. Do not place near heat sources, such as radiators, heat registers, or appliances which produce heat.

4. Guard against objects or liquids entering the enclosure.

5. Connect only to AC power outlets rated 100-120V or 230V 47-63Hz (depending on the voltage range of the unit; refer to the back panel). Current ratings should be 400mA for the 120V range and 200mA for the 230V range.

6. Do not step on power cords. Do not place items on top of power cords so that they are pinched or leaned on. Pay particular attention to the cord at the plug end and the point where it connects to the amp.

7. Unplug your Bass POD Pro when not in use for extended periods of time.

8. Do not perform service operations beyond those described in the Bass POD Pro Pilot’s Handbook. In the following circumstances, repairs should be performed only by qualiﬁed service personnel:

•liquid is spilled into the unit

•an object falls into the unit

•the unit does not operate normally or changes in performance in a signiﬁcant way

•the fuse is blown (replace with 400mA timed fuse for 120V, and 200mA timed fuse for 230V)

•the unit is dropped or the enclosure is damaged

9. Prolonged listening at high volume levels may cause irreparable hearing loss and/or damage. Always be sure to practice “safe listening.”

CHAPTER 1: Q

UICK START GUIDE

ANUAL

? I DON’T N

Register and Get Great Free Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1•1

Get On-line: Line 6 Internet Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1•2

NTRODUCTION

Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1•3

Amp & Cab Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1•4

There’s Magic in the A.I.R.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1•5

Let’s Go Out: Model and D.I. Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1•7

ToneTransfer: POD Sound Exchange and Web Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1•7

CHAPTER 2: C

Front Panel Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2•1

Rear Panel Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2•10

CHAPTER 3: S

Live/Studio Mode Switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3•1

Inputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3•1

Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3•2

Re-Amping and Processing Line Level and Non-Bass Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3•7

Radiation Alert: Hum Induced by Computer Monitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3•9

EED NO STINKING

: W

ELCOME THE

ONTROLS

ETTING UP IN THE STUDIO

& C

POD...

ONNECTIONS

ANUAL

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1•1

CHAPTER 4: L

Live/Studio Mode Switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4•1

Inputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4•1

Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4•2

Voicing of the 1/4 Model Out in Live Mode: Tuning POD for your Speaker Cabinets . . 4•5

Pedal Power: Foot Control Options for POD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4•6

POD Takes Over: Using POD as a Front-End for Another Bass Ampliﬁer. . . . . . . . . . . . 4•7

CHAPTER 5: M

IVE SETUPS

ODELED AMPS

& C

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5•1

ABS

CHAPTER 6: B

Deep Editing: Where to Look for More Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•1

POD Onboard Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•1

Compressor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•2

Octave Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•2

Analog Chorus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•3

Danish Chorus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•3

Orange Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•3

Gray Flanger. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•3

Tron Down & Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•4

S & H . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•4

S & H + Flanger. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•4

S & H + Danish Driver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•4

Bass Synth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•4

Danish Driver. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•5

Large Pie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•5

Pig Foot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•5

Rodent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6•5

ASS

POD E

FFECTS

CHAPTER 7: C

Using the Manual Mode Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7•1

Using the Channel Program Memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7•1

ToneTransfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7•2

POD Sounds on the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7•2

Swapping POD Channels with Friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7•2

Edit Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7•3

Customizing Amp Models and Effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7•4

Activating Customization Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7•6

Memory Reset: Returning your POD to its Factory-Programmed State of Mind . . . . . . . 7•7

CHAPTER 8: T

Floor Board: The Full-Featured POD Foot Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•1

Getting Connected. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•1

Effect On/Off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•2

Banks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•2

Channel Select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•2

Manual Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•3

Editing and Saving POD Channels with the Floor Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•3

Tap Tempo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•4

REATING

HAT’S USING YOUR FEET

& S

TORING PROGRAMS

CHAPTER 8: T

HAT’S USING YOUR FEET (CONTINUED

)

Tuner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•4

Wah Pedal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•5

Volume Pedal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•5

Effect On/Off Setting Stored with Programmed Channels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•6

FB4: Simple Foot Control for POD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8•7

CHAPTER 9: D

MIDI Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•1

What’s MIDI? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•1

MIDI In/Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•1

MIDI Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•2

MIDI Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•2

Transferring Sounds Between Bass PODs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•4

Transferring All Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•4

Transferring Some Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•4

Backing Up POD Programs to Other Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•5

Transferring All Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•5

Transferring Some Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•5

Emagic SoundDiver Software for Deep Editing and ToneTransfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•6

Other Things You Can Do with MIDI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•7

Changing POD Channels with MIDI Program Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•7

Tweaking POD Tones with MIDI Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•7

Full MIDI Automation of POD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•7

Step-By-Step With SoundDiver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•9

SoundDiver Setup Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•14

EEP EDITING

& MIDI C

ONTROL

MIDI Program Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•2

MIDI Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•2

MIDI Sysex Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9•3

APPENDIX

A: Amp & Cab Models and Associated Parameters B: Effect Parameters: Tapping, Tweaking & More C: MIDI Program Changes D: MIDI Controls E: Line 6 Contact: Customer Service & Other Line 6 Products F: Warranty Info & Instructions for Obtaining Factory Service

UICK START GUIDE

“M

ANUAL

DON’T NEED NO STINKING MANUAL

? I

!”

UICK

“M

ANUAL

1. If you’re using your POD for recording, set the rear panel LIVE/ STUDIO switch to ‘STUDIO,’ and connect POD’s 1/4 inch or XLR outputs to your mixer or recorder inputs, or connect headphones.

2. If you’re using your POD as a preamp into a power amp and speaker cab(s), set the rear panel L connect POD’s 1/4 inch Model output (not the XLR output) to your amp inputs.

3. Connect your bass to the B switch above the jack to ‘BASS INPUT.’

4. Connect the rear panel P switch to ﬁre up. (Keep the volume down on your amp or mixer in case of audible pops at POD’s outputs during power up).

5. Select an A

6. Set the C to your heart’s desire. OUTPUT LEVEL sets output level. (Clever!)

7. Pick an E COMPRESS LEVEL so you’re happy with the sound.

8. Browse the pre-programmed settings using the U Or press the MANUAL button for a “Manual Override” that gives you where-the-knobs-are-is-how-it-sounds operation.

9. What number 9? You’re already up and running!

TART

? I

DON’T NEED NO STINKING

MP MODEL.

HANNEL VOLUME to max and the BASS, MID, and TREBLE

FFECTS setting and adjust the EFFECT TWEAK and

UIDE

or:

IVE/STUDIO switch to ‘LIVE,’ and

ASS INPUT JACK and set the toggle

OWER and ﬂip the front panel POWER

P/DOWN arrows.

1 • 1

MANUAL!”

But wait, before you go any further, ﬂip to the inside back cover of this manual and notice that it folds out. The idea is to have this handy pictorial reference always opened out while you’re thumbing through the manual. If you photocopy the back of it, you’ll have a handy template for making a note of your favorite POD

settings. Now then, before you run off....

REGISTER AND GET GREAT FREE STUFF!

Included in this manual is a handy, postage-paid card for you to send back to us to register your purchase, and let us know a little about yourself. It is

very important

QUICK START GUIDE: GET ON-LINE

1 • 2

that you ﬁll that registration card out right now, and send it to us in the mail or jump on the internet and register at the Line 6 Support Center – www.line6.com.

How come? Well, for one thing, it gets you all set up for warranty service should you ever have a problem with your POD. (Warranty info is at the end of this manual.) It also ensures that we will be able to contact you if new software versions or other enhancements are offered – cutting edge technology and all that.

GET ON-LINE

Here at Line 6, our mission is to bring powerful new technologies to musicians. As part of that mission, we focus great effort on making the Internet a valuable resource for every one of our customers. You may already have surfed the Line 6 site at http://www.line6.com when you were considering your purchase, and found all the information already there on Line 6 products and technologies.

The Line 6 web site is one of the most effective ways for us to bring you what you need. Through the Internet, we can give you instant access to all kinds of great, free stuff to make you and your POD ever more powerful. Like a powerful help library staffed by our helpful product support experts, handy tips & tricks, electronic versions of this and other documentation, the latest news of what’s

happening with Line 6 and the products we make for you, and....

Line 6 ToneTransfer and Discussion Forums: Visit the web site, and you’ll ﬁnd a powerful way to connect to other POD and Flextone II users. Swap sounds, get and give advice, and generally hang out and get POD-a-licious, all from the privacy of your own comfy computer chair!

Already on the Internet? Great! Visit us often and check out the late-breaking news and the other resources there. Not on the Internet yet? This may be the time to make the big jump, and thereby ensure that you will get all the great resources we can offer for you and your POD.

INTRODUCTION: WELCOME THE POD...

INTRODUCTION

WELCOME THE POD...

Thank you for inviting a POD home with you. Whether you use your POD as a direct recording miracle, a stomp box on steroids, for practice, or as a creative digital signal processing tool – and heck, why should it be just one? – we think you’ll agree that POD is about the most amazing thing to happen to electric bass since the addition of a low B-string. POD mines the tonal heritage of the past forty years of bass ampliﬁer design and matches it up with the kind of digital signal processing magic that will still be ahead of its time in the next century.

How does POD help you create tone that is out of this world, and then get that tone wherever you need it? Easy! It’s…

MODELING

Modeling: just what is it, and why is it so important? (By the way, you sent in that registration card or did it on the web, right? OK, just checking.)

1 • 3

At its most basic, modeling means making a software-based system that delivers the same experience as a traditional system based on physical electronics, wood, and all the rest. Line 6 makes software that captures the heart and soul of the components of classic amp and cabinet designs, and delivers that tonal heritage to

you in your POD. It all got started a while ago in a Los Angeles laboratory....

The engineers at Line 6, being an adventurous lot, and totally pumped about this whole tone thing as well, decided to stock up on the coffee, bust out the engineering equipment, and get down to learning everything there is to know about classic amp and speaker cabinet designs. Riding high on the caffeine wave, they began a three-year project to analyze and map out exactly how different types of tubes, other electronics, and cabinets respond under various conditions typical of ampliﬁer design. How the amps process an input signal, how the signal is colored and shaped, at what point it begins to distort, the quality and

INTRODUCTION: WELCOME THE POD...

1 • 4

characteristic of the distortion, the important role speaker cabinets play in communicating great tone – complicated stuff, but all analyzable as electronic data. A guitar or bass pickup output, after all, is an electronic signal, and tubes and the rest of the system are really just a complex form of signal processing.

Having sussed it all out, the Line 6 engineers were then able to apply their digital expertise to develop software which simulates the signal processing of the tubes and other electronics, as well as the speaker cabinets, entirely within the digital domain. Cool, huh?

This revolutionary DSP (digital signal processing) software-based modeling technology gives Line 6 the power to create super silicon-based life forms like POD: a tonally mind-blowing, multi-FX packed, shiny wonder box with ultimate

ﬂexibility for creating awesome tone....

AMP & CAB MODELS

This modeling know-how allowed Line 6 to create software Amp and Cab Models modeled after a collection of ampliﬁers and speaker cabinets recognized by players the world over as true “tone classics.” We got these amps and cabs together, cranked ’em up, and had a look at the electronic data generated by the tubes, transformers, capacitors, plate and grid voltages, tone control curves – and the whole mess of components and elements unique to each ampliﬁer design. This research led to the creation of Line 6’s software Amp and Cab Models. These models were tweaked up through careful, scientiﬁc A/B comparisons to the gear that inspired them, with an ear open for the effects of different volume levels and settings of the originals’ tone and gain controls. The gain and equalization characteristics of the modeled amps were carefully measured so that changes to amp knobs on the models would mirror the effects of these changes on the originals as closely as possible. We’re talkin’ major attention to detail here. Tone control center frequencies, slopes, and cut/boost range were painstakingly analyzed, and we also carefully attended to the effect of presence switches, “bright” channels, and other model-speciﬁc factors. Not only that, but since these old amps have highly interactive circuits, we paid careful attention to the way that the setting of one knob changes the way that another knob on the amp behaves.

All in an effort to make our Amp and Cab Models as much like the amps and cabs we modeled as possible.

INTRODUCTION: WELCOME THE POD...

The resulting Amp and Cab Models are the foundation of your POD. Now, then – here are a couple of things we want to be completely crystal clear on:

1. The Line 6 modeling process is a patented, 100% digital software-based

technology exclusive to Line 6.

2. Line 6 Modeling is not sampling, nor is it solid state; no special bass, pickup,

or cabling is needed.

THERE’S MAGIC IN THE A.I.R.

POD delivers its modeling tones through another innovation: Line 6's A.I.R. direct recording output. The A.I.R. (acoustically integrated recording) technology is the result of intensive research and careful study of the tonal characteristics produced by the interaction of ampliﬁers, cabinets, speakers, microphones and the recording room during the recording process.

The direct output of many preamps, ampliﬁers and direct box-style amp replacements available today offer some limited form of cabinet simulation or speaker emulation. Those that happen to be more than simple high end roll offs have little or no control options. These cabinet simulations cannot reproduce the markedly different tones of different cabinets which arise from the choice of speakers, wood, and other design elements. They also fail to reproduce the signiﬁcant tonal contribution of microphone selection and placement, and do nothing to reproduce the subtle ambience of the recording space.

1 • 5

The result is the familiar dissatisfaction with direct recording products – even those that deliver a reasonably usable basic tone fail to reproduce the “life” of the sound, and destroy the proper feel in the process. Your sound lost its magic.

POD's combination of Amp Models and A.I.R. technology provides superior direct tones by recreating all the elements contributing to a great recorded bass sound, and giving you that tone with the same feel as playing through a classic amp and speaker cabinet:

• The effect of the ampliﬁer electronics is emulated by the Amp Model you

choose. Each model was developed from extensive study of a classic ampliﬁer treasured as a tone classic.

• In a bass amp, once the signal passes through the electronics, it is output to one

INTRODUCTION: WELCOME THE POD...

1 • 6

or more speakers in a speaker cabinet. The speciﬁc design of the speakers, how many there are, and how they are arranged contributes signiﬁcantly to your tone, as does the construction and resulting tone of the wood box itself. An Ampeg SVT head driving a cabinet with a single 15-inch speaker, for instance, will sound dramatically different from the same head driving an 8x10 cabinet, or a cabinet that combines various speakers and a horn. Line 6 has carefully constructed virtual software speaker cabinets that emulate the contribution made by real speaker cabinets in the quest for great bass sound.

• Once the sound makes it out of the speaker cabinet, the next important link in the recording system is the microphone that receives that sound. Bass recordists select different microphones, and arrange them in different placements, to get particular sounds. A microphone pointing directly into the cone of a speaker will hear something different than one positioned off-axis. Line 6 carefully analyzed the coloring that standard microphones add to the sound, as well as the effects of different mic placement techniques, and developed a set of cabinet simulations that give you the tone of great speaker cabinet and microphone combinations.

• The amp, cabinet, and microphone don't just sit in empty space. The room that they are in contributes importantly to the sound you will record. Reverb can be used to capture the basic character of the space, simulating the effect of the sound reﬂecting off the room's walls, ﬂoors and ceiling. But there are other subtle details that have more to do with the “spread” of the sound as it passes through the air between the speaker and microphone. This ﬁnal component is the key to the sense that the listener is in one position in the room, and the sound is in another position, and that the two are separated by a mass of air that sound spreads through to reach the listener.

All of these important sound-shaping components are accounted for in your POD. Turn the Amp Model knob to call up the ampliﬁer emulation you want. POD automatically matches that ampliﬁer with an appropriate cabinet and microphone setup, and gives you the sound of that setup coming through the air of a recording space. You can add effects to taste, and start recording incredible mic'd up sound. The included SoundDiver MIDI-control software lets you use a Macintosh or Windows computer to do “deep editing” of these and other POD parameters. With it, you can design your own custom rig, making new combinations of Amp Model and cabinet/microphone emulation, and adjusting the contribution of the “spread” of the sound as well.

INTRODUCTION: WELCOME THE POD...

LET’S GO OUT...

While doing the research for your POD, we asked leading bass players and recording engineers what’s the best way to record great bass tone. Their answer was clear: You need two tracks, one for the mic’d up amp, and another for a high quality direct input from the bass. That’s why your POD has two distinctly different outputs – both serve up great tone, each with its own purpose. Be sure to get all of the juicy details in Chapter 3.

TONETRANSFER

With your POD, you get a constantly-expanding universe of sounds. We created a ToneTransfer Web Library for the original guitar POD at www.line6.com – searchable by artist, musical style, and more. Look for a Bass POD ToneTransfer library as well, where you’ll be able to grab great sounds or post your own. The sounds you collect transfer seamlessly between Bass PODs and any Macintosh or Windows based computer – so wherever you go, all your sounds can make the trip.

AND AWAY WE GO....

1 • 7

So, now that you know what’s in store, it’s time to experience POD for yourself. Grab your favorite axe, plug in to POD, and ﬂip back to the handy Quick Start Guide on the ﬁrst page of this chapter if you haven’t already been through that.

Then, press ahead to the POD Grand Tour....

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS

If you haven’t already done so, turn to the inside back cover of this manual and notice that it folds out. Ooh, pretty pictures! The idea is to have this essential pictorial reference always opened out while you’re thumbing through the manual. And if you photocopy the back of it, you’ll have a handy template for making a note of your favorite settings. The boxed numbers that pop up throughout the manual correspond to the numbers on the foldout’s illustrations.

Power Switch - Left side of front panel. Flip to bring your POD to life.

Bass Input - Right side of front panel. Plug your bass in here. (You techies

will want to know this is a mono, unbalanced connection). There is also a line level input on the back for use when you are re-amping (processing tracks playing back from tape or disk), or when you are processing non-bass line level sources. This is also great for the line level output from many wireless systems. Make sure you set the...

2 • 1

Input Select Switch - Right side of front panel. This switch selects

either the front panel Bass Input or the rear panel Line Input. Pick one.

Phones - Left side of front panel. Plug in your headphones here for silent

practicing. Volume’s set by the Output Level knob. The headphone ampliﬁer is designed to provide hot signals for a variety of headphones. As a result, you can get very loud output from this connector. Be sure to set levels carefully so you don’t blow your head off when listening to your POD through your phones.

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS

Output - Far right knob in the “knob trench.” Controls the overall output

level of POD. Also sets the headphone level. This setting is not saved when you store settings into one of the POD’s memory locations. Changing the Output level

2 • 2

does not change your tone. So you can get the tone you want at any volume level.

POD will give the best signal-to-noise ratio performance when you have the Output level control at max. With the Output level control turned down low, you may get extra hiss that obviously ain’t what you want. In order to allow you to set the Output level as high as possible with recording, mixing, and other studio gear, be sure you are plugging POD’s outputs into line level, not microphone or instrument level inputs, when you have Studio Mode selected (via the rear panel switch described in the following pages). Line level inputs should allow you to turn POD’s Output level up all the way (or close to it) and thereby get the best sound possible. If your gear has inputs that function as mic/line level inputs, start by setting the trim for those inputs to the minimum level, and set POD’s Output to max, when setting levels.

Manual Button - In the middle of your POD. Press this button to light it

and activate “Manual” Mode. In this mode, wherever the knobs are set is what

you’re hearing. Move knobs around to change sounds. Or....

Channel Up/Down Buttons - To the left of the Manual button.

POD has 36 channel locations (POD is like a 36-channel amp) that store a huge variety of complete amp-and-effect selections pre-programmed by the tone mavens at Line 6 to rock your world. They are arranged in nine banks of four channels each. (The four are called A, B, C, and D.) You can think of each bank as a sort of virtual four-channel bass amp – and you’ll ﬁnd that the same layout is used on the optional Line 6 foot controllers for POD (the Floor Board and FB4) which are discussed later in their own chapter.

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS

You access POD channels by pressing the Up and Down buttons. Tap either button to move to the next channel in the bank; press and hold down either Up or Down button to jump from bank to bank. The Manual button’s light goes off to let you know you’re not in Manual – the “where-the-knobs-are-is-how-POD-sounds” – Mode anymore. When recalling a channel, its settings will not be reﬂected by the present knob positions – like you may have left the Bass knob at minimum whereas the just-recalled channel has this control set to max. To change anything, just grab the knob you want and tweak. More on all that later.

Amp Models - Top left knob on the POD with words all round it. When

you spin this knob, it’s essentially like changing what electronic “circuitry” is running inside POD to make your amp sound. (Also see Modeled Amps and Cabs in Chapter 4.)

When you choose an Amp Model, a Cabinet Model is also loaded automatically. For instance, when you choose the Rock Classic model (based on the classic Ampeg SVT head), a Cabinet Model based on a AMPEG SVT 8x10 will be loaded with it. You can choose a different cabinet via the Effects/Cab knob (below). In fact, in your Bass POD, all amp-related settings are automatically loaded when you turn the Amp Models knob. Drive, Bass, Mid, Treble, Cab, etc. will all be determined by the Amp Model you choose – giving you a ready-to-rock sound with the turn of just this one knob. Once you get familiar with POD, you can change these Amp-associated settings to customize the settings of each of the Amp Models to ﬁt your tastes. Complete details are coming up in Chapter 7.

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Drive - Far left knob in the “knob trench.” This knob controls how hard

you’re driving the input of the chosen Amp Model. Like the input volume control on a non-master volume bass amp, higher settings give you more “dirt.”

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS

Tone Controls - Continuing to the right of the Drive knob... Bass, Middle,

Treble. Just like a regular bass amp, only when you change Amp Models, the response and interactivity of the controls changes, too – to act like the tone

2 • 4

controls of the original amp that inspired the Amp Model you’ve selected.

Chan Vol - This knob controls the relative volume level of the “channel”

you are playing through. Use this to balance levels between the sounds you store in two different POD channels (say between your ﬁnger-style and thumb tones). In general, you want to set the Chan Vol as high as possible to insure you’re getting the best signal-to-noise ratio performance.

Compress - How much compression do you want today? Spin this knob

to set the Compressor level. Since compression plays such a vital role in successfully recording the bass, we’ve included this awesome sounding programmable compressor modeled after the legendary studio compressor, the LA2A. Turn the knob up for more compression; at the minimum knob position, the compressor is turned off. More details in the Effects Chapter.

Effect Tweak - This knob varies the effect you’ve chosen. Turn it up and

the effect will go deeper, louder, faster, longer or just plain more. For all the inside poop, look at the back cover foldout, Appendix B for Effect Parameters, and the Effects chapter. If you set the Effects knob to Bypass, Effect Tweak will, of course, not change anything.

Effects/Cabs - Top right knob on POD with words all round it. This knob

selects which effect or combination of effects you get (once again, all the details on effects are in the POD Effects chapter), and also selects which cab model you’ll be hearing. To choose a Cabinet Model, press the CABS and EQ button ﬁrst, and

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS

then turn this knob; the available cabinets are labeled in gray around the knob. Turning the Amp Models knob to choose an Amp Model will automatically select an appropriate cabinet; you can customize this Amp/Cab pairing, as described in Chapter 7.

Tuner - Button in the middle of POD. Press that puppy and – shazam!

Instant digital chromatic tuner. All POD’s Amp Model and effects processing are bypassed so you can hear those questionably-tuned strings clearly, should you choose to do so. Play a note on your bass and POD will show you what it is on that handy single-character display; all notes are displayed as naturals or ﬂats, so you’ll see A instead of G . Play that string you’re trying to tune again, spin its tuning key so it goes sharp and ﬂat, and two little red arrows below the Tuner button will give you a light show. The arrow on the left lights up if you’re ﬂat. The arrow on the right lights if you’re sharp. And both arrows will light at the same time when you’ve got it just right. Give any one of POD’s buttons a push and the tuner disappears just as swiftly as it came and you’re right back to normal POD operation.

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Tuner Volume - You can adjust the tuning volume of your POD by turning the Chan Vol knob while the tuner is active. When you exit tuner, you may need to re-

set this knob to get the right Channel Volume setting. Alternatively, if you have a Floor Board connected, the volume pedal will control the tuner volume, too.

Tuner Reference - Want a different reference than A=440Hz? When you’re in the tuner mode, turn the Middle knob on POD while watching the display. Hey, it changes! You can set the reference frequency anywhere from 436-445 Hz. This setting is stored so you don’t have to reset it every time you turn on POD if you decide you want to be different (or if that piano in your rehearsal room has decided it wants to be different). Since there’s only one digit in the POD display, all we display is the last number, so if you set the tuner to reference 441 Hz, you’ll see “1”.

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS

Apply FX to D.I. - This button determines if the juicy effects you’ve

programmed will also be heard on the D.I. output. (They’re always heard on the AMP MODEL output.) More FX details in the POD Effects chapter.

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Cabs and EQ - When this button’s light is ﬂashing, the knobs of your

POD ﬂip into a Clark Kent-style alternate identity, and you are instantly endowed with the following super powers:

Cab Model Select (Effects Knob): Make sure the Cabs and EQ button’s light is ﬂashing, then spin the Effects/Cab knob to select any of the 15 modeled bass cabinets, or bypass for no cabinet.

Digital Out Level (Drive Knob): Make sure the Cabs and EQ button’s light is ﬂashing, then give the Drive knob a twist to set the level of your Digital Output. At the minimum position, no additional gain is added to the digital out; at the maximum knob setting, 24dB of extra gain is available to insure full range output at the digital output. Be sure not to turn this TOO high, or you’ll quickly be introduced to the joys of digital clipping.

Post-Modeling EQ (Bass, Middle and Treble Knobs): This is an extra parametric-type EQ that can be used to ﬁne tune your POD sounds. Use it to remove resonant frequencies of a particular bass, or to add that “little extra something” to your favorite amp model, or you can choose to simply ignore it. In any case, this is how you get to it: Make sure the Cabs and EQ button’s light is ﬂashing, then use the Bass knob to select the EQ Frequency, the Middle knob to select a narrow or broad range of frequencies, and the Treble knob to apply up to +12db of boost, or an inﬁnite amount of cut. Treble at 12 o’clock turns this EQ off.

FX Lo-cut (Chan Vol Knob): Now, here’s one you won’t see on your run-of-themill effects processor. After countless interviews with bass players, we got the picture that effects are cool, but must not mess with the fundamental bass tone. Enter the FX Lo-cut effects crossover. This special feature allows you to send the higher frequencies to the effects, all the while leaving the all important fundamental frequencies untouched and free to be felt and heard without

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS

effectiﬁcation. It’s kinda like serving up your main course (the fundamentals), and then adding the secret sauce (the effects) as a seasoning – instead of drowning the whole thing in mayo. Tasty indeed! Make sure the Cabs and EQ button’s light is ﬂashing, then spin the Chan Vol knob to set the frequency of the FX Lo-Cut. Turn this knob to minimum for no lo-cut (so your full signal feeds the FX).

Noise Gate (Compress Knob): Your POD includes a built-in noise gate, intended to reduce the hiss and noise amps tend to put out when you’re not playing, especially at high gain settings (since high gain means that noise is turned up along with your awesome sound). To turn the Noise Gate on, make sure the Cabs and EQ button’s light is ﬂashing, then turn the Compress knob to the right until it’s past the 1 o’clock position. To turn off the Noise Gate, make sure the Cabs and EQ button’s light is ﬂashing, then turn the Compress knob to the left until it’s below the 11 o’clock position.

Mid Frequency Sweep (Effect Tweak Knob): Six of the amps that we modeled for your POD include some kind of “selectable” or “sweepable” mid control. Our models just wouldn’t be right if you couldn’t do the same, so “voilà”– your very own Mid Sweep control! This function only applies to the Adam & Eve, Amp 360, Rock Classic, Session, Stadium, and Sub Dub models. So don’t be calling our lovable customer service folks when it doesn’t work on the Flip Top model, okay? Details of the frequencies that are sweepable can be found with the Amp Model descriptions in the Amp Models chapter. To do the Mid Sweep magic, make sure the Cabs and EQ button’s light is ﬂashing, then give the Effect Tweak knob a twist to dial in the mid frequency of your choice.

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Time Alignment (HOLD Cabs and EQ, turn Chan Vol Knob): We’ve got

one more cool tool and no more knobs left. But fear not – where there’s a will, there’s bound to be some way or other to stumble toward the goal. In this case, we’re giving you a control for adjusting the time alignment of the D.I. output in relation to the Model output. A natural consequence of the EQ, modeled tube, and modeled cabinet and A.I.R. processing is a shift in the phase relationships of various frequencies in the Model output signal. This is just what you’d get out of a physical amp, physical speakers, and sound propagating through a physical recording space. When you combine an unprocessed direct signal with this dynamically shifting processed tone, it helps to have ﬁne control over the time

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS

alignment of the two signals to ensure that they will blend in the most effective way. We’ve given you up to 8 milliseconds of offset time for the D.I. to make this ﬁne tuning. In order to access this time alignment adjustment, you have to press,

2 • 8

and keep holding in the Cabs and EQ button, and turn the Chan Vol knob at

the same time. At the minimum knob position, you’ll have no offset of the D.I. versus the model; at the maximum knob position you’ve got the 8 milliseconds. When you release the Cabs and EQ button, the Chan Vol knob will return to it normal life of setting the Channel Volume or adjusting the FX Lo-Cut. The Time Alignment setting, by the way, is speciﬁc to the Channel you are currently using, and it will be saved and recalled when you save and recall a Channel memory, just like the other tone shaping parameters. This way, every one of your sounds can be optimally tuned for the best Model + D.I. sound combination (as we’ve done for you with all those juicy factory presets).

Save - When you want to store your own tweaked-up sounds in your POD,

this button is the key. Exactly how it works is detailed in Chapter 6: Creating & Storing Sounds. But you’re probably impatient, so here are the basics:

When you are using one of the pre-programmed POD sounds, the POD’s singledigit number display will be lit, telling which bank you are in – 1 thru 9 – and one of the channel letters – A thru D – will be lit also. If you turn one of POD’s knobs, you’ll notice the word “EDITED” will be lit to the left of the POD single-digit display. This is a reminder to you that you have tweaked the memorized channel, and that you should save it if you want the memory to remember the tweak. To save your changes, press the Save button . The button will start to ﬂash. Press the Up and Down buttons and you will see that you are switching through memory locations A, B, C, and D in each of POD’s nine numbered banks. Pick one to store your sound in, and press that Save button a second time. The button’s light will stop ﬂashing, and the sound is stored at the location you chose, replacing the sound that was stored there before. Doesn’t get much simpler than that. After the sound is stored, you can bring it back any old time by simply pressing the Up and Down buttons to call up the location where you stored it. (See Chapter 7 to learn how to do all this with your feet on the Floor Board).

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS

If you aren’t using one of the pre-programmed POD sounds – you’re in Manual mode, and you’re just getting the sound of where the knobs are set – you can store that state into a memory location the same way. Press Save, use the Up and Down buttons to choose a place to save to, and press Save again. If you decide you don’t want to store the sound after you’ve started saving, press the Manual, Tuner, or MIDI button to cancel the save. (The save will also be canceled if you don’t press any buttons for 5 seconds after having pressed Save.)

You may want to audition the memorized POD “preset” sounds before you start saving anything. Note the ones you can live without as locations you can save over.

The Save button also lets you customize any of the Amp Models and Effects to your own taste, so your customized version of the amp or effect comes up instantly when you turn Amp Models or Effects. See Chapter 7 for the details on that.

MIDI - This button is used to set POD’s MIDI channel and dump sounds

via MIDI. Details are in the Deep Editing & MIDI Control chapter.

2 • 9

REAR PANEL CONNECTIONS

2 • 10

Here’s the part where we go behind-the-scenes of your POD Pro. Looking at the rear panel, we’ll start from the left side:

Line Level Input & Output / “Pre” Effects Loop - The two

jacks illustrated below. These 1/4 inch connectors carry line level signals into and out

of your POD, and run signals that are unbalanced at -10 dBV level. If you want to use the Line Level Input, be sure to set the front panel switch to the Line Input position.

So what can you do with these jacks? Lots of stuff:

Re-Amping – One of the things that made the original POD a valued tone tool was its value in re-amping of bass tracks. Say somebody has already recorded some bass tracks, and you are now mixing them. If the bass seems to need a bit more edge, or some other tone shaping, you can run your outputs from your tape or disk tracks into the POD and make magic. Don’t forget to set

the front panel Input Select switch to the Line Input position.

Hardware Amp Farm – Line 6’s Amp Farm software is sort of like a software POD that runs on a Pro Tools system. One of the things that Amp Farm lets you do is record un-processed instruments to disk, while hearing

REAR PANEL CONNECTIONS

them processed non-destructively by the Amp Farm plug-in software. You hear the sound of the amp simulation as you track, but you haven’t committed it to the recording. (This is much like the way you would handle reverb when recording a vocal; you record naked vocal to the track, while using reverb as you monitor the post-tape/disk signal or a separate feed off the signal before it goes to the track.) The line level in/out on your POD Pro let you do this. Plug the Unprocessed Bass Out into your recorder, and plug the output of that track into the Line Level Input (or feed the line level input via an effect send that gets signal from the recorded track). Now you can hear your POD processing as you track, but you haven’t committed your tone choice to tape. That means you can change from a modeled Marshall to a modeled Ampeg during the mix stage, once you see how your tracks are ﬁtting together. Or you can change Cab Models or any other aspect of your sound.

Don’t forget that you’ll need to set the front panel Input Select switch to the

Line Input position to do the re-amping boogie.

Non-Bass Processing – Another thing people like to do with both POD and Amp Farm is process everything else but basses. Drums, vocals, keyboards, entire mixes – you name it, people are using Line 6 modeling products to process it. The line level input on your Bass POD Pro helps you make the connections to these signals. Don’t forget to set the front panel Input

Select switch to the Line Input position.

2 • 11

Tuner Output – Want to use a stage tuner with your POD? The

Unprocessed Out is a perfect signal source.

Wireless Connection – Many wireless systems have a line level output. You can plug it into your POD rear panel Line Level Input, and you’re ready to rock. Don’t forget to set the front panel Input Select switch to the Line

Input position.

“Pre” Effects Loop – And, as if that weren’t enough, you also have the option of using these connections as an effects loop. Connect the (Send) to the input of some other effect unit you want to use, and connect that unit’s

REAR PANEL CONNECTIONS

output to the (Return). Your external effect’s processing is now inserted before (“pre”) all your POD’s amp and effect processing. Note that this effect is applied to both Model and the D.I. signals. If you prefer to apply some

2 • 12

additional effect processing to only the Model and leave the D.I. unaffected, you’ll want to pay attention to the next set of jacks on our back panel tour:

“Post” Effects Loop - These quarter inch -10dBV unbalanced

connections give you an effect send and return so you can patch additional effects into POD’s signal chain. This loop is applied only to the Model output, leaving the D.I. output unaffected by the extra effect processing.

To use this effects loop, just connect the (Send) to the input of the other effect unit you want to use, and connect that other effect unit’s output to the (Return). Your external effect’s processing is now inserted after (“post”) all your POD’s amp and effect processing, for the Model output only. As we mentioned, your D.I. output is not affected by this effect loop. If you have an effect that you want to apply to both the Model and the D.I. signals, you can use the Re-Amping/”Pre” Effect Loop connections.

REAR PANEL CONNECTIONS

Live/Studio Mode, XLR & 1/4 inch Outputs - One of the

powerful features of your POD is its Live/Studio Modes and associated XLR and 1/4 inch connections. We’ve designed these to give you the most versatile bass tool possible, whether you’re going to be in the studio or on stage, recording direct-todisk, or pumping a stadium full of sound through a wall of cabs.

Studio Mode – Flick the Live/Studio switch to the Studio position, and you get a pair of XLR balanced +4dBu outputs, as well as a pair of 1/4 inch unbalanced -10dBV connections. Both carry the same Modeled and D.I. signals – including A.I.R. processing for speaker/mic/room emulation – and you can use whichever connections are most appropriate for interfacing with your recording gear.

2 • 13

Live Mode – Move the Live/Studio switch to the Live position, and you get

independent signals on the 1/4 inch and XLR outputs:

• The 1/4 inch Model output is now carrying your signal – without speaker/ mic/room simulation – to your on-stage power amp and cabinets. This lets you drive your backline for a wall of stadium ﬁlling sound, or a more modest power amp/cab setup for your personal on-stage pleasure.

REAR PANEL CONNECTIONS

• The 1/4 inch Direct output’s level is set by the front panel Volume knob along with the 1/4 inch Model output. (The XLR Direct output is not affected by the Volume knob.)

2 • 14

• The XLR jacks have been magically transformed into a pair of balanced mic level outputs with ground lift, suitable for plugging into the typical onstage mic snake to feed your monster tones to the house mix or P.A. The Model output’s signal is a specially-tuned speaker simulation that gives you perfect sound without having to hassle with mics on your speaker cabinets – plus the signal bleed and other challenges that come with them. Remember this signal is mic level, so you’ll want to connect it to a mic level (not line level) input on the house mixer or P.A.

• The XLR Direct output’s level is not affected by the front panel Volume knob (unlike the 1/4 inch Direct output).

Live Mode 1/4 inch Output Voicing: In Live Mode you can select the “voicing” of the 1/4 inch jacks to best match the speaker set-up you’ll be using. There are four preset voicings from which to choose:

Setting the Live Mode 1/4 inch Output Voicing

1. Start with Bass POD Pro turned OFF.

2. Press and hold SAVE while powering up.

3. Use the Up/Down Buttons to select a mode:

A Standard Tuning (ideal for well-tuned full range systems; we used Eden and SWR 4x10s with horns as our reference systems for sound deveopment, with horns at 12 o’clock)

B Bass Boost (try this with small-diameter speakers)

C Mid Boost (try this to enhance the mid presence)

D Treble Boost (try this when driving bass-heavy cabs)

4. Press SAVE to conﬁrm.

REAR PANEL CONNECTIONS

Digital Outputs and Clock - Your POD includes connections for both

AES/EBU and S/PDIF format 24 bit digital output. Use these to track your POD direct to your digital input recording system (note that the loop does not affect the digital outputs).

2 • 15

The External Digital Clock In connector receives a clock signal from your digital mixer or recorder, synchronizing POD’s digital output to your system. POD’s front panel Digital Sync switch determines its output sample rate (44.1kHz or 48kHz), and whether it will sync its output to the external clock source (in that case, the sample rate syncs to the sample rate of the incoming digital clock).

Please see your digital mixer/recorder documentation for information on conﬁguring its digital clock. The Line 6 technical support crew, though they may be friendly, talented, and always eager to please, won’t be able to instruct you on how to conﬁgure your entire studio worth of new digital recording equipment, and tell you why your digital audio program conﬂicts with your ﬁnancial management software. Nevertheless, we don’t want you ﬂoundering around in there all by yourself, so here are a couple handy tips that should allow you to incorporate your POD in an already-conﬁgured studio:

REAR PANEL CONNECTIONS

Generally, you’re gonna have one of two situations:

• Situation Number Uno – If your digital recorder/mixer has a clock output

2 • 16

– like on a Digidesign Pro Tools 888, a MOTU 2408, a Yamaha 02R digital mixer, etc. – you will want to make it the clock master (generally called something like “Internal Sync”), and set POD’s Digital Sync switch to External. POD will then derive its sample rate from your recorder/mixer, and output a digital signal perfectly synced to the rest of your system.

• Situation Number Dos – If your system doesn’t have a clock output – like a Digidesign Audiomedia, Digi 001, Digital Audio Labs Card D, etc. – you’ll set POD’s Digital Sync switch to 44.1 or 48 (not External), and set your recorder to sync to its digital input (which is coming from POD).

If you hear a click-click-clicking when you try to make this happen, it generally means POD is outputting a non-synced signal to your system. Time to re-read the two paragraphs above, then contact your recorder/mixer manufacturer’s customer support staff if the situation persists. And don’t forget to check that selector switch to make sure its properly set to output either AES-EBU or SPDIF. Also, note that POD’s digital clock connector is unterminated. If you are hooking POD to equipment which requires a terminated connection, be sure to use a BNC clock terminator.

MIDI In & Out - Connect POD to your MIDI equipment to select channel

memories (via Program Change messages) or automate POD settings (via controllers and/or Sysex). Emagic SoundDiver software is included on the accompanying CD for sound editing/storage on a computer, as well as ToneTransfer access to the sounds from the Line 6 Web Library or other sources. The POD MIDI OUT connects to another device’s MIDI IN; its MIDI IN goes to another device’s MIDI OUT. Please also see Chapter 9, Deep Editing and MIDI Control, to setup your MIDI gear with POD and ﬁnd out what MIDI can do for POD and you.

REAR PANEL CONNECTIONS

Pedal Connector - Looks like a telephone connector on steroids. This is

where you connect the optional Line 6 Floor Board or FB4 foot controllers. Chapter 8 hips you to the wonders of these foot controllers, and the tremendously positive impact they can have on your life.

2 • 17

SETTING UP IN THE STUDIO: LIVE/STUDIO MODE SWITCH

SETTING UP IN THE STUDIO

If you’re going to be using your POD in a recording situation, here’s what you need to know to get set up. See the next chapter if you’re using your POD for live performance. The numbers in black boxes below refer to the back cover foldout’s POD illustration.

LIVE/STUDIO MODE SWITCH

The ﬁrst thing to do is check the rear of your POD, and make sure you have the Live/Studio Mode switch set to the Studio position. This determines how your POD will conﬁgure its outputs and signal processing.

INPUTS

3 • 1

Your POD includes two inputs – a front panel instrument level input, and a rear panel line level input. You select which of these inputs you want to use by ﬂipping the Input Select Switch on the front panel.

Bass Input – This is just like the input on your standard bass ampliﬁer or preamp. Plug one end of a guitar cable into your bass, and connect the other end here.

Line Level Input – The Line Level Input on the rear panel is under the boxed label Re-Amping/”Pre” Effects Loop. This jack is designed for line level inputs that you want to process with POD, or can be used as an effects loop for adding external effects. Details are on pages 3 (for the loop) and 7 (for reamping and other uses) of this chapter.

SETTING UP IN THE STUDIO: OUTPUTS

OUTPUTS

POD makes friends easily. It’s right at home next to a multiple hundred thousand dollar, bajillion input SSL console, and will just as happily do its thing with your portable cassette recorder.

3 • 2

When you’re introducing POD to the other equipment in your studio, be sure you are plugging its outputs into line level inputs on your other gear, as opposed to microphone level or guitar level inputs. This will insure that you get the best signal-to-noise ratio (lots of juicy guitar tone, not too much hiss) with POD. Some equipment uses the same physical inputs for mic & line level sources, allowing you to trim low level signals (like mics) up to a high level at the inputs. If you are plugging your POD into one of these inputs, try setting the trim to minimum, and twisting POD’s Output Level and Channel Volume knobs up to maximum. If your equipment has a couple of open line-level only inputs, you’ll probably get better performance by plugging into these, rather than the wide-ranging mic-toline level trimmed inputs.

Your POD includes several outputs for interfacing to a variety of equipment, for a range of applications. Here’s the rundown, from left to right as you’re looking at the rear panel:

SETTING UP IN THE STUDIO: OUTPUTS

Unprocessed Out – “Unprocessed!? I thought this POD thing was

supposed to process my sound and make it sound like a wall of SVTs!” Don’t worry, POD does that, but we’ve also given you this handy connection for other mischief. This is primarily intended for re-amping (see Re-Amping on page 7 of this chapter) but can also be used as an effects loop: connect the (Send) to the input of some other effect unit you want to use, and connect that unit’s output to the (Return). The additional processing is applied to both the Model and D.I. output signals, before all other processing.

“Post” Effects Loop – These quarter inch TRS -10dBV unbalanced connections give you an effect send and return so you can patch additional effects into POD’s signal chain. Connect the (Send) to the input of some other effect unit you want to use, and connect that unit’s output to the (Return). Note that this loop is applied to the Model output only (the D.I. is not affected), and comes after all the amp and effect processing.

3 • 3

SETTING UP IN THE STUDIO: OUTPUTS

Analog Outputs – Your POD gives you two pairs of analog outputs. The

XLR connections give you a +4dBu balanced signal with the Line 6 A.I.R. processing for speaker/mic/room simulation. The 1/4 inch connections give you this same signal unbalanced at -10dBv for connecting to equipment that prefers these levels. The front panel Output knob determines the levels

3 • 4

at these outputs (note it does not affect the level of the XLR outs in the Live Mode which is described in the next chapter). In general, you want to set

this knob, as well as the Channel Volume control, to maximum in order to get the best signal quality. Be sure that you have set the Live/Studio switch to the

Studio position.

SETTING UP IN THE STUDIO: OUTPUTS

Digital Outputs and Clock – Your POD includes connections for both

AES-EBU and S-PDIF format, 24 bit digital output, as well as a connection for digital clock:

When hooking up the digital outputs, make sure you set the selector switch for either AES-EBU (that’s the big XLR connector) or S-PDIF (that’s the little RCA/phono connector). Note that the Channel Volume and Output knobs should both set as high as possible to get maximum

output. Digital Out Gain (hold CABS and EQ and turn DRIVE

knob) can give you additional digital output level, as described in Chapter

2. Also, note that the “post” loop does not affect the digital output signal.

3 • 5

The External Digital Clock In connector receives a clock signal from your digital mixer or recorder, synchronizing POD’s digital output to your system. The front panel Digital Sync switch determines POD’s output sample

rate (44.1kHz or 48kHz), and whether it will sync its output to the external clock source (in which the output sample rate will be determined by the device supplying the clock).

SETTING UP IN THE STUDIO: OUTPUTS

3 • 6

with your ﬁnancial management software. Nevertheless, there are a couple handy tips that should allow you to incorporate your POD in an alreadyconﬁgured studio, and here they are:

Generally, you’re gonna have one of two situations:

• Situation Number Uno – If your digital recorder/mixer has a clock

output – like on a Digidesign Pro Tools 888, a MOTU 2408, a Yamaha 02R digital mixer, etc. – you will want to make it the clock master (generally called something like “Internal Sync”), and set POD’s Digital Sync switch

to External. POD will then derive its sample rate from your recorder/ mixer, and output a digital signal perfectly synced to the rest of your system, assuming the gods of digital sync have not picked today to mess with you.

If you hear a click-click-clicking when you try to make this happen, it generally means POD is outputting a non-synced signal to your system. Time to re-read the two paragraphs above, then contact your recorder/mixer manufacturer’s customer support staff if the situation persists. And don’t forget to check that selector switch to make sure its properly set to output either AES-EBU or S-PDIF. Also, note that POD’s digital clock connector is unterminated. If you are hooking POD to equipment which requires a terminated connection, be sure to use a BNC clock terminator.

SETTING UP IN THE STUDIO: RE-AMPING

RE-AMPING

You’ve got a pair of 1/4 inch connectors that carry line level signals into and out of your POD, running unbalanced at -10 dBV level. If you want to use this Line

Level Input, be sure to set the front panel switch to the Line Input position.

So what can you do with these jacks? Lots of stuff:

Re-Amping – One of the things that made the original POD a valued tone tool was its value in re-amping of guitar tracks. Here in Los Angeles where Line 6 is headquartered, you can walk into any number of top-tier studios and see a shiny red kidney bean shaped thingy hanging around the control room, ready to massage the pre-recorded tracks that have been brought in for mixing. Say somebody has already recorded some tracks, and you are now mixing them. If the bass seems to need a bit more edge, or some other sort of further tone shaping, you can run your outputs from your tape or disk tracks into the POD and make magic. Don’t forget to set the front panel Input Select

switch to the Line Input position.

3 • 7

Hardware Amp Farm – Line 6’s Amp Farm software is sort of like a

software POD that runs on a Pro Tools system. One of the things that Amp Farm lets you do is record un-processed instruments to disk, while hearing them processed non-destructively by the Amp Farm plug-in software. You hear

SETTING UP IN THE STUDIO: RE-AMPING

the sound of the amp simulation as you track, but you haven’t committed it to the recording. (This is much like the way you would handle reverb when recording a vocal; you record naked vocal to the track, while using reverb as you monitor the post-tape/disk signal or a separate feed off the signal before it goes to the track.) The line level in/out on your Bass POD Pro let you do

3 • 8

this. Plug the Unprocessed Out into your recorder, and plug the output of that track into the Line Level Input (or feed the line level input via an effect send that gets signal from the recorded track). Now you can hear your POD processing as you track, but you haven’t committed your tone choice to tape. That means you can change from a Marshall-inspired model to an Ampeg-based tone during the mix stage, once you see how your tracks are ﬁtting together. Or you can change Cab Models, effects, or any other aspect of your sound. Combine this with MIDI, and you can have full automation of your POD, too. See Chapter 9 for MIDI details. Don’t forget to set the front

panel Input Select switch to the Line Input position.

Non-Bass Processing – Another thing people like to do with both POD and Amp Farm at those aforementioned big studios is process everything else but bass. Drums, vocals, keyboards, entire mixes – you name it, people are using Line 6 modeling products to process it. The line level input on your POD Pro helps you make the connections to these signals. Don’t forget to set

the front panel Input Select switch to the Line Input position.

Tuner Output – Want to use a stage tuner with your POD? The Unprocessed Direct Out is a perfect signal source.

Wireless Connection – OK, you’re probably not using a wireless in the studio. But if you were... many wireless systems have a line level output. You can plug it into the Bass POD Pro rear panel Line Level Input, and you’re ready to rock without wires. Don’t forget to set the front panel Input Select

switch to the Line Input position.

SETTING UP IN THE STUDIO: RADIATION ALERT

“Pre” Effects Loop – And, as we mentioned earlier, you can also use these

jacks as an effects loop, to add the effect processing of one of your other efffects processors to your POD’s signal ﬂow. To use this loop, just connect the (Send) to the input of some other effect unit you want to use, and connect that unit’s output to the (Return). The additional processing is applied to both the Model and D.I. output signals, and happens before all other processing.

RADIATION ALERT

If you’ve got a computer in your studio, this important public service announcement is for you. You’re likely to ﬁnd, especially if you are using a bass with single coil pickups, that it is quite easy to pick up some serious noise from any computer monitor that you use near your guitar. CRT displays are, after all, just special purpose ray guns that shoot photons at you all day long. Your bass pickups receive and amplify the electro-magnetic ﬁelds that your display radiates, and you hear this in your audio signal as buzz and hum. Moving farther from the CRT, and turning your bass so it does not directly face the computer’s display, will minimize this problem. But if you ﬁnd yourself in a tight studio setup, needing to lay down some quick tracks, and being pestered by CRT-induced buzz, you may ﬁnd it helpful to do as we have sometimes done: set up your track to record and start your pre-roll; reach up and ﬂick your computer monitor’s power switch off; record your part; stop your recording, ﬂick the monitor back on, and check out the buzz-free playback.

3 • 9

LIVE SETUPS: LIVE/STUDIO MODE SWITCH

LIVE SETUPS

If you’re going to be using your POD as a preamp with your power ampliﬁer and speaker cabinets, or for its direct output to a house mixer, P.A. or other live performance sound system, here’s what you need to know to get set up:

LIVE/STUDIO MODE SWITCH

The ﬁrst thing to do is check the rear of your POD, and make sure you have the Live/Studio Mode switch set to the Live position. This determines how your POD will conﬁgure its outputs and signal processing.

4 • 1

INPUTS

Bass Input – This is just like the input on your standard bass ampliﬁer or preamp. Plug one end of a guitar cable into your bass, and connect the other end here. Be sure to set the front panel Input Select switch to the Bass Input

position.

Line Level Input – The Line Level Input on the rear panel is under the boxed labeled Re-Amping/”Pre” Effects Loop. This jack is designed for line

LIVE SETUPS: OUTPUTS

level inputs that you want to process with POD. You may ﬁnd this handy if you use a mixer as part of your live rig, and want to send its output to your POD. Also, many wireless systems have a line level output. You can plug it into the POD Pro rear panel Line Level Input, and you’re ready to rock without wires. Don’t forget to set the front panel Input Select switch to the

Line Input position.

4 • 2

OUTPUTS

Your POD includes several outputs for interfacing to a variety of equipment, for a range of applications. Here’s the rundown, from left to right as you’re looking at the rear panel:

Unprocessed Out – “Unprocessed!? I thought this POD thing was supposed to process my sound and make it sound like a wall of SVTs!” Don’t worry, your POD does that, but we’ve also given you this handy connection for other mischief.

These connections are primarily intended for re-amping (see the Re-Amping section of the Setting Up In The Studio chapter) but can also be used as an

LIVE SETUPS: OUTPUTS

effects loop: connect the (Send) to the input of some other effect unit you want to use, and connect that unit’s output to the (Return). The additional processing is applied to both the Model and D.I. output signals, before all other processing.

If you have an external tuner that you want to use with your POD, you can also use these Uprocessed Output to get a nice clean signal to your tuner’s input.

4 • 3

LIVE SETUPS: OUTPUTS

Analog Stereo Outputs – Your POD gives you two pairs of outputs to use

in Live Mode so you can feed your on-stage power amp and speaker cabinets at the same time as sending a separate set of outputs to the house mixer or P.A. system. Be sure to set the Live/Studio switch to the Live position.

4 • 4

Connect your on-stage power amp and speaker cabinets to the 1/4 inch Model output. This delivers the amp-and-effects tones of your POD without

the speaker simulation that’s present at the XLR Model output. The front panel Output quality, you generally want this knob high, and your power amp’s output level low, as opposed to the other way around. Or just set ’em both high for ultra volume. You probably won’t be using the 1/4 inch D.I. output while in Live Mode, but if you do, please note that it is also affected by the setting of the front panel Output knob.

The XLR jacks let you send signals to a house mixer or P.A. These are mic level, ready to plug into the typical mic snake feeding from the stage to the

knob determines the level at this output. For best signal

IVE SETUPS

house system, or into mic level inputs on your P.A. or mixing board. The front panel outputs. The specially-compensated to feed a house mixer or P.A. If you’re getting groundloop hum, try the Lift/Ground switch to lift the grounds.

Output

XLR Model

knob setting does

output gives you the amp-plus-effects signal

not

affect the level at these

OICING OF THE

INCH MODEL OUTPUT

1/4

OICING OF THE

Your POD can be tuned for optimal performance with a variety of speaker cabinets when in Live Mode. By default, your POD expects be plugged into a power ampliﬁer driving one or more full-range cabinet(s), and it tailors the Live Mode sound at its 1/4 inch Model output to work well with the tone that’s typical for these this type of rig. (We used Eden and SWR 4x10s with horns as our reference systems for sound development, with horn volumes at 12 o’clock.) To select another voicing, hold the display will show a letter for one of the voicing choices; press the Up and arrows to pick the mode, then press

Mode...

A (default) B C D

1/4

Save

INCH

button while powering up your POD. POD’s

Save

ODEL

UTPUT

We call it... Because...

Standard Tuning ideal for well-tuned full range systems

Bass Boost try this with small-diameter speakers

Mid Boost try this to enhance mid presence

Treble Boost try this when driving bass-heavy cabs

Down

4 • 5

The voicing you select will be remembered by your POD, so you don’t have to reset it every time you power up. If you change it to an odd setting for a special situation you come across, don’t forget to change it back again to the setting you normally use once you get back to your standard setup.

LIVE SETUPS: PEDAL POWER

Digital Outputs and Clock – Your POD includes 24 bit digital output in

both AES-EBU and S-PDIF formats, as well as a connection for digital clock:

4 • 6

Unless you’re really into the direct-digital way of life, you’re probably not using these for your live setup. Details on these connectors are in the previous chapter on Studio setups.

PEDAL POWER

POD has a couple of foot control options: the Line 6 Floor Board and FB4. While we’ll go into all the details in a later chapter, for now it’s good to know that the FB4 is a four-button foot switch that allows you to select between four POD memories. Its big brother, the Floor Board, allows hands-free selection of any of the sounds programmed in your POD’s channels, plus a wah pedal, a volume pedal, stomp box-style individual on/off control of POD effects, and tuner control. Whichever you Line 6 foot controller you choose, it will plug into the rear panel Pedal jack on your POD. You can also control your POD with a standard MIDI control pedal.

LIVE SETUPS: POD TAKES OVER

POD TAKES OVER

The foregoing discussion all assumes you’re using POD to drive a power ampliﬁer and speaker cabinets. The original, kidney bean shaped POD, is often used in front of another bass ampliﬁer as a tone-shaping front end for that amp. You can do that with your Bass POD Pro, too, if you like, as we are about to describe:

Generally, you want to make your connections to POD’s 1/4 inch Model output, and switch the Live/Studio switch to the Live position. This disables the part of the digital signal processing which is simulating a speaker, moving air, and microphone – which you probably don’t want, because you’ve got a real physical speaker right there in the bass amp which is doing its part to shape the tone of your POD. (Of course, we have sometimes found that small open-back combos sound better with the switch in the Studio position; you may want to experiment with both for your set up). DON’T connect headphones to POD, as they will override the Live/Studio switch and turn the extra processing on so things sound right in the headphones (and wrong on the amp). Connect a standard guitar cable from the POD Modeled output to the input of the bass ampliﬁer. If the ampliﬁer has an effect send/return, you should also experiment with plugging into the return instead of to the amp input. The return generally comes after the amp’s own input gain stage, so you should get a cleaner sound this way. Also, the return generally will be happier with POD’s line level output, which should mean less hiss and unwanted noise for you.

Voicing of the 1/4 inch Model Output

4 • 7

As we already mentioned a couple of pages back, your POD’s 1/4 inch Model output can be tuned for optimal performance with a variety of systems when in Live Mode. By default, your POD expects to be plugged into a full-range cabinet. (We used Eden and SWR 4x10s with horns as our reference systems for sound development, with horn volumes at 12 o’clock.) If you want to plug into a different

LIVE SETUPS: POD TAKES OVER

type of speaker cabinet setup, you’ll want to experiment with the voicing options. To do this, hold the Save button while powering up your POD. POD’s display will show a letter for one of the voicing choices; press the Up and Down arrows to pick the mode, then press Save. The voicing you select will be remembered by your POD, so you don’t have to re-set it every time you power up. If you change it to an odd setting for a special situation you come across, don’t forget to change it back again to the setting you normally use once you get back to your standard setup.

4 • 8

Mode... We call it... Because...

A (default) B C D

Standard Tuning ideal for well-tuned full range systems

Bass Boost try this with small-diameter speakers

Mid Boost try this to enhance mid presence

Treble Boost try this when driving bass-heavy cabs

POD Output Level: A Word of Caution

POD’s Output Level control is setup with enough gain available to drive into almost any piece of equipment. Consequently, it also has plenty of power available to overdrive the input of your bass amp, which you don’t want since it will add extra distortion that will color the sound so you don’t hear the “true” POD tones. So, set it pretty low at ﬁrst, then you can experiment with higher settings.

LIVE SETUPS: POD TAKES OVER

Tuning Your Ampliﬁer

When you’re having your POD “take over” another guitar ampliﬁer, it’s a good idea to start off with that amp in neutral. What is “neutral,” you ask? Well, if you only have one volume control on your amp, set it low enough to get a “clean” tone; that ensures POD’s sounds come through as purely as possible. If you have a master volume in addition to a volume control on the input, set them both so that the ﬁrst volume doesn’t overdrive the master volume (so you’re getting a clean tone). This will vary from amp to amp, but usually the input volume is going to be less than the master volume to get a clean, non-distorted sound. If you have passive tone controls, try setting your mid control at max, and your treble and bass controls at zero (this is actually “ﬂat” equalization-wise on most amps). Active tone controls may vary; with many of these, setting all the tone controls to 12 o’clock will be the “neutral” tone. Just be sure you’re not overdriving the amp so the POD tone comes through without extra coloration. Once you get going, you can tweak the ampliﬁer settings to suit your tastes. Try to set the POD Output level so you’re not overdriving the input of the amp, be sure the Live/Studio switch is in the Live position, and you should be in business!

4 • 9

If you have a bass amp with an effect return or a jack that lets you connect directly to the input to the power amp, you can plug POD’s output right into that connection and that will generally bypass the tone controls of the amp and avoid their coloring of POD’s tones.

ODELED

MPS

ODELED AMPS

& C

ABS

HICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED

HICH AMPS AND CABS ARE

Note:

that you will ﬁnd throughout this manual, please be aware that Fender, Marshall, Vox, and other ampliﬁer model designations, and the names of musical artists and groups, and effects, are all trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or afﬁliated with Line 6. These marks and names are used solely for the purpose of describing certain ampliﬁer tones produced using Line 6’s modeling technology. The Line 6 modeling technology provides POD with a wide variety of sounds and effects modeled after some of the most popular sounds of the classic amps, effects, and artists mentioned here.

There are 16 Amp Models living within your POD, plus 15 Cab Model selections. When you turn the You can then mix ’n’ match different cabs with the amp by pressing the

customize these amp/cab combinations. In this chapter, we list all 16 of the Amp Models and their companion Cabinet Models, and describe the original equipment that inspired them. It starts at the bottom left of the dial...

For the following description of the Line 6 Amp Models, and other references

Amp Models

button and turning the

knob, you select an Amp/Cab combination.

Effects

knob.

Chapter 6

ODELED

tells you how you can

Cabs and

5 • 1

Session -

1993) with a SWR Goliath 4x10 cabinet. While researching the story of this amp and the company that made it, we uncovered a multitude of bass amp lore. See if you can follow this: SWR founder Steve Rabe once worked for an ampliﬁer company called AMP Music Products. AMP was run by Russ Allee, formerly the main engineer at Acoustic. (More on the Acoustic 360 coming up.) The SWR Goliath cabinets were originally built by David Eden – but that story will have to

This is modeled from an SWR SM-400 (produced from 1985 through

ODELED AMPS

5 • 2

& C

ABS

HICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED

wait until we return to this saga in the Adam & Eve section. Now then, as you might be starting to suspect, the details of bass amp design and production get a little blurry in this era, but one thing that’s absolutely deﬁnite is the great tone produced by this rig. SWR amps are used by a wide variety of Bassists including John Paul Jones, Tony Campos (Static X), Michael Bradford (Kid Rock), Juan Nelson (Ben Harper), Fred Mollings (Backstreet Boys and N’Sync), and 311.

Once again, our model stays true to its inspiration and pumps out the signature tones that will get you in the groove. The Bass, Middle, and Treble knobs were modeled to perform like the SWR’s. The Midrange frequency is set at 500 Hz, but you can also adjust it, if you like, via the Mid Sweep feature. Mid Sweep is available for the amp models that are based on amps, like the SWR SM-400, that offer a “swept” mid EQ frequency (in other words, “user-selectable” mid frequency). Press and hold the

Tweak

knob to sweep the mid frequency of your POD’s Session amp model.

Cabs and EQ

button, then turn the

Effect

The SWR Goliath 4x10 cabinet was produced from 1987 through 1990. This cab deﬁned the “L.A. sound.” Featuring four Eden drivers and a high-frequency tweeter, the SWR's angel breath highs, silky mids, and round lows instantly appealed to thumbsters – but it found its way onto some mighty loud stages as well. This is a versatile cab, and sounds great with many of the other amp models in your POD. Be sure to try the mix-and-match cab function with this one.

California -

This is modeled after the Mesa/Boogie Bass 400+. Introduced in the late Eighties, the Bass 400+ features 500 watts of Class A/B operation, with twelve(!) 5881 Output tubes, four12AX7 Preamp tubes, a single channel, Volume/ Bass/Middle/Treble + Bright Switch, Master Volume, 7-band Graphic EQ, and a Parallel Loop. The Bass 400+ has been the mainstay of Boogie’s Bass line for over a decade. Both Michael Anthony (Van Halen) and Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) have toured with the Bass 400+.

During the modeling process, we set the graphic EQ ﬂat, and the bright switch was off. This setting produces a warm, dynamic, and earthy tone that’s well suited for many styles of players.

ODELED AMPS

& C

ABS

HICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED

The Bass 400+ was modeled with a Boogie 2x15 front ported, closed back cabinet. This cab is known for it’s controlled girth – we call it fat and friendly. We’re sure you’ll love the tone, and really appreciate not having to lug the real cabinet around to get it.

Jazz Tone -

With this model, you now have your very own place to go for the classic tones modeled after the Polytone Mini-Brute. This amp is known as the combo that knows every wedding standard and lounge hit from the last 40 years. The original amp houses a single 15-inch speaker that can best be described as intimate and subdued. Plug in here when it’s time for your more introspective

mood indigo

Adam & Eve -

moments.

This modeled after the Eden Traveller WT-300, and with it, we return to the saga of bass amps and the people who built them. In our last installment, David Eden had been making cabs for SWR. David continued this for 3 or 4 years, and then went into the business of making his own bass amp and cabinet line. Jim Demeter designed the electronics of the ﬁrst Eden amps, and they were quickly adopted by a veritable

who’s who

of modern bass society. The inspiration for the Adam & Eve model was the WT-300, one of Eden’s latter offerings which produces a clean, clear and rich tone. This model includes our Mid Sweep function, so be sure to give it experiment with giving it a spin when you’re dialing in your tone. As we’ve said in describing the earlier models, Mid Sweep is available for the amp models that are based on amps, like the WT-300, that offer a “swept” mid EQ frequency (in other words, “user-selectable” mid frequency). Press and hold the

Tweak

knob to sweep the mid frequency of your POD’s Adam & Eve amp model.

Cabs and EQ

button, then turn the

Effect

5 • 3

MODELED AMPS & CABS: WHICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED?

Eighties - What would any collection of bass amps be without a Gallien-

Krueger 800RB? This amp’s great tone was modeled for your POD’s Eighties amp model. After all, this amp helped deﬁne what new bass amps sounded like for the better part of that decade. Geddy Lee had one. Will Lee used one on Letterman. And bands like Def Leppard powered through a decade of pop metal with the 800RB.

The GK 800RB produces a very scooped sound, and doesn’t really distort. We modeled this amp with another legend of the Eighties, the Hartke 410 cabinet. This rig is known for producing what we call the “mid 80’s metal bass” tone. It’s

the perfect choice when you’re ready for a little Pyromania....

5 • 4

Stadium - This is the story of the Sunn Coliseum, and this is the history of the

modern bass amp. The Sunn is the ampliﬁer that spawned the explosion of power line-ups throughout the 60’s and 70’s. The ampliﬁer used by Jimi Hendrix and Noel Redding, by Pete Townshend and John Entwistle, by Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, by... well... take a look at the inside cover of your Woodstock album, and you’ll get an idea of the impact that Sunn ampliﬁers had in revolutionizing early rock music.

All of this can be attributed to the one band who’s music will forever be remembered in rock history as the ﬂash point for great, big, bass ampliﬁer impact: The Kingsmen.

The Kingsmen? That’s right! The band who brought you the party anthem “Louie Louie”, and quickly faded into anonymity, also brought the ampliﬁer that paved the way for so many that would follow.

Seems as though once “Louie Louie” became a hit, the Kingsmen were starting to play larger gigs. Norm Sundholm, bass player for the band, frequently complained that his bass amp was getting lost in the noise from the rest of the band’s amps and from the audience. So he called up his brother Conrad, an electronics enthusiast, and asked if he could rig something up that might help him out. Conrad set to work and pretty soon he’d soldered together a custom solution for brother Norm.

MODELED AMPS & CABS: WHICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED?

Other musicians soon heard the Sundholm brothers’ ampliﬁer, and were absolutely awed by its power. Norm and Conrad started to receive orders from guitarists and bass players who had to have one just like it. So Conrad set up shop in his dad’s garage, started building what would become Sunn ampliﬁers, and turned a small project for his brother into rock-and-roll legend.

Unfortunately for Conrad and Norm, the Sunn was soon to set. Although the brothers had enjoyed a great deal of success, receiving endorsements from the Rolling Stones, The Who and Jimi Hendrix, they had quite different views on running the business – sounds like some of the bands you’ve played in, don’t it? By the early 70’s, Sunn had set for the ﬁnal time.

Stadium is the name of the Sunn Coliseum 300-inspired model in your POD. It includes the Mid Sweep function. As we’ve mentioned with some other models, Mid Sweep is available for those amp models that are based on amps that offer a “swept” mid EQ frequency (in other words, “user-selectable” mid frequency). The Sunn gave you mid control from 250Hz - 1KHz, and the Mid Sweep lets you select that same frequency range here. Press and hold the Cabs and EQ button, then turn the Effect Tweak knob to sweep the mid frequency of the Stadium amp model.

The Stadium model was created with Sunn’s unique cab that features one frontmounted 12-inch speaker and one upward-angled 18-inch speaker. Plug in, raise a toast to the brothers Sundholm, and play Louie Louie for old times sake!

Amp 360 - This modeled after an Acoustic 360, as used by Larry Graham,

John Paul Jones, and Jaco Pastorius. We modeled an early 70’s Acoustic 360, that featured a separate preamp “head,” and a powered cabinet with a single 18-inch speaker in a folded horn.

The 360 with the built in fuzz and tuner was the choice of many of our faves including John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin. He can be seen playing thru two in The Song Remains the Same ﬁlm. Many think he’s responsible for some of the coolest bass tones of the time, and the 360 was deﬁnitely part of his tone for a

5 • 5

MODELED AMPS & CABS: WHICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED?

while. But it was Jaco Pastorius who showed us what a versatile amp the 360 really was. Jaco’s work with Weather Report really stands out, and when the band left Jaco alone onstage for his bass solo he really wrenched everything he could out of his gear which included two Acoustic 360’s, a wah pedal, a rackmount “blue” MXR digital delay and his trusty Jazz bass. Towards the end of his solo he would stomp on the wah pedal, turned on the fuzz and do a great rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. He got everything out of that amp, from mellow jazz to speaker shredding feedback, and thanks to your POD’s Amp 360 model, now it’s your turn!

We modeled this amp with its EQ Select #3 switched on, and the fuzz off. Be sure to use the Mid Sweep function to get all of the dripping tone that this model can produce. Mid Sweep is available for the amp models that are based on amps, like

5 • 6

the Acoustic 360, that offer a “swept” mid EQ frequency (in other words, “userselectable” mid frequency). Press and hold the Cabs and EQ button, then turn the Effect Tweak knob to sweep the mid frequency of the Amp 360 amp model.

As we already mentioned, the cabinet for this amp model is the powered cabinet with a single 18-inch speaker in a folded horn that was the mate for the Acoustic 360 preamp head.

Rock Classic - For 30 years now, we’ve heard the tone and felt the power of

the mighty Ampeg SVT. This workhorse has appeared on innumerable recordings and arena stages worldwide – there is no equal to the original SVT and its 300 watts of pure tube magic. (FYI – replacing the tubes in a SVT nowadays would cost you more than you paid for your Bass POD!) First introduced in July 1969, the SVT set the tone, punch and arena-rattling standard for all future big gun bass rigs. Its users have included everyone from The Rolling Stones to Van Halen, and pretty much every “rock” bass player in between.

For your POD, we selected a 1974 Ampeg SVT with a late 70’s SVT 8x10 speaker cabinet for our modeling efforts. We used the “normal” input of channel one, and the “ultra high” and “ultra low” switches were in the off position. The original SVT had a switch to select a midrange frequency of 220, 800, or 3000 Hz. In Bass Pod, the frequency defaults to 800 Hz but you can get all these frequencies via the

MODELED AMPS & CABS: WHICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED?

mid sweep function. Mid Sweep is available for the amp models that are based on amps, like the SVT, that offer a “swept” mid EQ frequency (in other words, “userselectable” mid frequency). Press and hold the Cabs and EQ button, then turn the Effect Tweak knob to sweep the mid frequency of the Rock Classic amp model.

The SVT speaker cabinet was also introduced in 1969, and features an inﬁnite bafﬂe (totally sealed) design that houses eight 10-inch speakers in four compartments. Each compartment holds a pair of speakers and is completely sealed from the rest of the cabinet. Removable dollies were included with the early cabinets, but by 1977, the cabinet included a pair of ﬁxed wheels to tilt the cabinet back while navigating the amp using the new “towel bar.” The sonic combination of this head and cab is beyond big, but you had to pray that your bandmates would help you move it! Thanks to Bass POD, you can now get big classic rock bass tone without frequent visits to the chiropractor.

Brit Major - For this model, we studied our 1969 Marshall Major. While

doing the initial research, we discovered our amp had the wrong tubes in it, and that sent us on a quest to ﬁnd some NOS (new old stock) vintage KT-88s. We called experts across the country looking for “new” thirty year old tubes. Several months and a king’s ransom later, our search paid off, and we started over with an original set of vintage Mullards in the amp. What an incredible difference the “right” tubes in the “right” amp can make! We “jumped” the channel 1 input to the channel 2 input, thus combining the high and low channels (this was a common practice for bassists and guitarists alike.) Wow! Stand back and bow down to the royalty of British Bass Tone. If this sound doesn’t cause your neighbors to come looking for Jack Bruce, nothing will. Higher drive settings will get you those warm, natural overdrive tones heard on Cream records and many others from that era.

5 • 7

The cabinet we modeled with the Marshall Major is a ’76 Marshall 4x15 cab. The 4x15 sound is unique and awesome, and the combination of the Major and this cab is somewhat darker that the Brit Super model (based on the Super Bass).

MODELED AMPS & CABS: WHICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED?

Brit Super - This is modeled after a 1968 Marshall Super Bass “plexi” with

vintage EL-34 tubes. In general, the Super Bass is brighter than the Major, and sounds a little “fuzzier” with higher Drive settings. Marshalls of this era became the signature backline for most of the British bands, and you would have seen and heard them with John Entwistle (The Who), Andy Fraser (Free), Noel Redding (Jimi Hendrix Experience), Ron Wood (Jeff Beck Group), Jack Bruce (Cream), Tim Bogart (Vanilla Fudge), and Roger Glover (Deep Purple).

We’ve matched this amp model up with a cabinet model crafted from our studies of the 1967 Marshall 4x12 with pre-Rola 20 watt Celestion greenbacks. This speaker cabinet occupies an especially respected place in our studio. The ragged

5 • 8

vinyl on this vintage treasure proves it has earned its way on many a road gig, and that, along with the signature basket weave grille, gets every bassist – and guitarist – that passes through our shop stopping to plug in and learn what we have learned: this is the best cab we’ve ever heard. Warm and woody, this cabinet gets every player in the building bowing down to the gods of great tone. And now, via the wonders of modern digital technology, your POD brings you cab tone modeled from this truly remarkable piece of tone history.

Silver Panel - Modeled after a 1967 Fender Bassman head with 2x15 cabinet.

By ’68, when the Beatles went in to record The White Album, they had pretty much done away with their Vox amps in favor of the new “silverface” Fender line. John and George played through Twin Reverbs and Paul through the 2x15 “tall cab” Bassman. This amp remained his favorite through the end of the Beatles’ recording career, and can be see in the Revolution video (the cab is laying on its side), and all over the Let it be movie – including the infamous “rooftop” concert which closes the ﬁlm. Paul went on to use the amp for his ﬁrst solo recordings, and live during the early Wings period.

For our model of this classic, we studied a 1967 silverface Fender Bassman. We plugged into the Bass channel, and set the Deep Switch to the “on” position. The original amp has only Bass and Treble controls, leaving us with the prospect of a middle knob with nothing to say for itself. But fear not; in this case, we’ve set up

MODELED AMPS & CABS: WHICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED?

POD’s Middle knob so you can add some post-Amp Model midrange contouring for a little more ﬂexibility. Set the Middle knob to its “neutral” 12 o’clock position for the classic Bassman sound. Turn it to the right (past 12 o’clock) and you get mid boost – turn it to the left (below 12 o’clock) for mid cut.

The Bassman was modeled with a 2x15 closed back cab loaded with JBL’s. The sound of this cab reminds us of the theme music from Barney Miller, and all of those days practicing with the high-school jazz ensemble. Try playing a little of the

Peter Gunn Theme....

Brit Class A - The story goes like this: Paul McCartney took delivery of his

ﬁrst Vox bass amp in late 1963 – it was a T-60 head and cab. The head was a single channel, solid state job, and it was one of the ﬁrst-ever production line solid state guitar amps. The cab housed two speakers – a 15-inch and a 12-inch – with a large capacitor to ﬁlter out low frequencies from the 12-inch. Within about three months, he got rid of the T-60 head, and powered his T-60 cab with an AC-30 head (about the same volume as the T-60 head, and a lot better sounding.) This rig was used for recording and touring thru 1964 and can be seen in many pictures and videos of the lads playing live, most notably at the Washington Coliseum concert which was the Beatles’ ﬁrst concert appearance in the states in February

1964. It was also the amp heard but not seen on their historical ﬁrst appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. It was a great sound. When the Beatles returned to the states in 1965 Paul was now playing thru what most people refer to as a T-100. (Although there is no such thing as a T-100.) What he was, in fact, using was an AC-100 head, with an AC-100 Bass Cabinet with two 15’s. Originally, Paul’s amp was without a stand, but before long, a custom built stand was seen. This rig was used for recording and touring thru 1965 and can be seen in countless pictures and videos of the Beatles playing live such as the Shea Stadium concert, the Hollywood Bowl concert and, of course, the 1965 Ed Sullivan show.

Brit Class A in your POD is modeled after the AC-100, and is characterized by its low-down lows and sweet high end. Now, those of you who have had the chance to get intimate with a Vox AC-100 may know that, true to Vox form, it’s got its quirks. One of the more obvious ones is that the Bass knob works backwards.

5 • 9

MODELED AMPS & CABS: WHICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED?

You’d expect that you turn this knob to minimum and get the least bass, and turn it to maximum to get the most bass. But no – those Vox guys decided to give their AC-100 a Bass Cut knob. So you turn the knob up... and the bass goes down. Now, that’s certainly novel, but not necessarily what you might expect.

This is a good opportunity, by the way, for you to get an insight into the sometimes twisted little world we’ve got going here at modeling central. We hate the idea of not making things just like the original, but we also hate the idea of a POD user having to wonder why their POD doesn’t seem to be working right. Balancing authenticity with ease of use keeps us up late nights.

5 • 10

In the end, we ﬁgured that, if we left the bass knob working backwards like the AC-100’s, we’d get a whole lotta confused people spending money calling our customer service crew to ﬁnd out why their knob was working backwards... sometimes. We ﬁgured we’d better help all those folks save some dough on the phone bill, and so we have set this knob up so that you get more bass as you turn up, and less bass as you turn down. You get the same response curve and frequency control as the AC-100’s knob would have given you, but now you don’t have to learn how to work things backwards. And thus, balance and harmony have been restored to the Line 6 product design universe.

The original AC-100 amp has no Mid control, so we’ve given you a post-Model Mid Boost that lives on the Middle knob. Turn the Middle knob to zero for authentic Vox tones, or turn it up for an extra pint of personality.

Motor City - While researching the legends of great bass gear, we discovered

a true lost gem: the Versatone Pan-O-Flex! This single 12-inch combo was designed by Bob Hall in the late 60’s and was a hit among the LA Studio scene – in particular, at RCA Studios. It’s a sealed back combo with some cool internal bafﬂing that makes it sound much larger than it actually is. Turn it up to about 1/3, and it has a warm tone. Turn it up a bit higher, and it will distort with a sweet sustain. Carol Kaye used a Versatone ampliﬁer on countless sessions, and Jack Casady still uses one with his SWR amps.

MODELED AMPS & CABS: WHICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED?

The Pan-O-Flex has only a few controls: Volume, Tone (labeled Bass on the left side, and Treble on the right), Pan-O-Flex balance, and a bright switch. We set this beauty up with its best settings when crafting our model, and we think you’ll agree that it really delivers: this model may well become the secret of your sound. With the Middle knob in the 12 o’clock position, our model gives you classic Pan-O-Flex sound. You can also create your own variation on the classic Pan-OFlex sound by turning the Middle knob up or down for a post-Model boost/cut.

Flip Top - This is modeled after a 60’s Ampeg B-15 – one of the most popular

studio bass amps of all time. If we had to sum up the amp’s sound up in one sentence, we would simply say: Listen to James Jamerson’s bass playing on the Motown/Tamala records of the 1960’s – The Supremes, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and many more. Jamerson played bass on more Motown hits than anyone else, and his choice for ampliﬁcation was the Ampeg B-15. We think you’ll agree that the sound of his P-bass through that amp on those records is as fresh and exciting today as it was 35 years ago. And if he’s not enough to convince you, how about “Duck” Dunn? Don’t get us started...

Ampeg introduced the B-15 Portaﬂex, ﬂip-top bass amp in 1960. It’s tuned and front-ported, has a closed back, is 25 watts with a single 15-inch speaker, and set a new standard for tone, cabinet and speaker efﬁciency, and convenience in bass ampliﬁcation. When your Bass POD Middle knob is set to zero, you’re getting classic B-15 inspired sound. Turn it up and you get up to 10dB of boost for extra midrange push.

Sub Dub - This fabulous tone was brought to us by Justin Meldal-Johnsen

who’s played bass with Beck, Tori Amos, and other luminaries. He brought his rack full of esoteric gear into the studio for us to poke and prod and model. The resulting Amp Model is perfect for Hip Hop, Electronica, Trance, Eurodance, Rave and all of your Alternative tone needs. Dig Justin’s own description...

5 • 11

MODELED AMPS & CABS: WHICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED?

“Dark and oh so deep, this is the sound you pull out when it’s time to go lower than low... to hit deeper than the Moog line, to rock harder than the 808 kick. The sound of this model is a particular, well-tuned, fundamental tone which gives you a lot of serious pure “note” without the muddiness you get when you try and make your amp do it. For myself, the sound creates a similar effect to standing in front of a well-executed bass rig with a few 18-inch speakers involved to handle the low parts of the sound spectrum (which is what I do playing live). Inspiration for this sound for me came from everyone from Massive Attack to Dr. Dre, DeAngelo to Aphex Twin, King Tubby to Future Sound of London, and all other champions of the ultra-low.” Thanks Justin – we couldn’t have said it any better.

5 • 12

Mid Sweep is available for Sub Dub, letting you select a frequency from 250Hz 1KHz for the Middle control. Press and hold the Cabs and EQ button, then turn the Effect Tweak knob to sweep the mid frequency.

Lower Drive settings produce virtually no clipping (distortion), while higher Drive settings will produce massive square wave distortion (thus giving your synth player tone envy). Once you’ve made a platinum record with this sound, be sure to remember us – and Justin – in your Grammy speech!

Tube Preamp - The thinking went like this: ‘Once people get this POD, it’s

gonna be so great that they’re gonna wish they could use it for everything – warming up keyboards, crunching up drums, fuzzing up vocals. We’ve gotta give ’em something to do that with!’ So we did. Tube Preamp lets you warm up any sound source the way producers and engineers often do in the studio with vintage tube gear. For more “edge” on vocals, send your vocal tracks through POD. Punch up (or munch up) a synth bass track by sending it through POD and cranking up the drive and EQ controls to suit your taste. And, although this is not actually a bass amp model, you can certainly get some great bass tones out of it. When you do this stuff, you want to use the Drive control like a mix knob on a reverb to control how much processing you want to hear. You generally don’t want to mix the pre-POD sound with the post-POD sound because of the comb ﬁltering that results. Instead, jack the sound source right into POD and then only monitor the sound post-POD processing. With the tone controls at 12 o’clock, the EQ is “ﬂat.”

MODELED AMPS & CABS: WHICH AMPS AND CABS ARE MODELED?

Cabinet Models - The following Cabinet Models are available, and are

accessed by pressing the Cabs and EQ button and turning the Effects knob:

Modeled after....

Cabinets with 10” Speakers

Cabinets with 12” Speakers

Cabinets with 15” Speakers

Cabinets with 18” Speakers

1979 Ampeg SVT 8x10 Cab

Eden “David” 4x10 SWR “Goliath” 4x10 Hartke 4x10 60’s Versatone Pan-O-Flex 1x12

1968 Marshall 4x12 with “pre-Rola” 25’s Ampeg B-15 1x15 closed back combo

Polytone 1x15 closed back combo Vox AC-100 2x15 Mesa/Boogie 2x15 (front loaded and front ported) Fender Bassman 2x15 with JBL’s 1969 Marshall Major 4x15 cab (Yeah, baby!) SWR 1x18

Acoustic 360 cab (1x18 in special folded horn enclosure)

5 • 13

Sunn Coliseum 8028 cab (1x18 + 1x12)

No Cab You’ll probably want to use this Cabinet model with the

Tube Preamp model for non-bass sources. It is selected by default when you pull up the Tube Preamp Amp Model.

The Cabinet Model is automatically selected by the Amp Model. You can customize these Amp/Cabinet pairings, as described in Chapter 7.

POD EFFECTS: DEEP EDITING

POD EFFECTS

DEEP EDITING

For tweak heads and MIDI-philes, we’ve included a handy MIDI editor/librarian program which is made by emagic, and called SoundDiver. The program runs on Macintosh and Windows computers, and can turn your computer into a POD command station. It lets you take “remote control,” and do everything that can be done from your POD’s front panel, plus a bunch of other cool stuff like saving and swapping sounds on the computer, as well as accessing additional effect parameters that lurk deep within the heart of POD. All the details are in the Deep Editing & MIDI Control chapter. Once you’ve looked over the basic information below on the POD effects, you may want to check out that chapter to ﬁnd out about the extras that a POD-computer-MIDI connection can bring you.

6 • 1

POD ONBOARD EFFECTS

In addition to all the great Amp Models built into POD, there are some great sounding effects. To pick which effect you want to hear, turn the Effects Knob. When you ﬁrst select the Effect you want, your helpful POD will preset the effect’s parameters so you’re instantly ready to go with a great sound (you can also customize this effect “preset” as described in Chapter 6). You can adjust the character of the effect you’ve chosen by turning the Effect Tweak knob. Many of the effects include our Smart Control feature that automatically adjusts the speed, depth, mix, or other parameters of the effects as you turn the Effect Tweak, so you get a full range of effect ﬂavors with simple one knob control.

POD EFFECTS: POD ONBOARD EFFECTS

Compressor - A compressor “squeezes” your sound so that the softer sounds

seem louder and the louder sounds won’t be too loud and jump out at you. It helps to even out your playing, and can also be used to give increased sustain. The compressor starts doing its thing when the audio feeding into it exceeds a certain threshold; above this threshold, the compressor kicks in and starts reducing the volume changes.

The compressor effect in your Bass POD was developed from our studies of the LA-2A tube compressor – one of those pieces of gear that’s earned a place in the ﬁnest of studios. Part of what’s made it such a well-loved piece of gear is its simplicity of operation. Unlike other compressors that include ratio, attack, release and other settings, the LA-2A is the picture of simplicity with all of these things hard-wired for great sound every time with minimum messing around; you

6 • 2

just turn one big front panel knob to determine how much compression you want. POD’s compressor effect follows the LA-2A’s lead with great sound that’s simple: dial up less compression (turn the knob counter-clockwise toward its minimum) or more compression (turn the knob clockwise toward its max position).

Another great thing about the LA-2A is the fact that, even with high compression settings, it is clear and musical, without too much “pumping” or “breathing.” Bass POD’s compressor is designed to capture that same character, so you get sweet, musical sound whether you’re using a little compression or a lot.

The Compress knob is adjusting the compressor threshold like the LA-2A’s knob does (and if you’re one of those control junkies, you’ll be happy to know that attack, decay, and ratio are controllable via the SoundDiver software). Turn the

Compress knob to its minimum setting to defeat the compression effect.

Octave Down - Modeled after the classic Boss OC-2 Octave pedal. The

Effect Tweak knob controls the mix. For those of you with four string basses, this

effects allows you to get down to that low B after all! The lower you play, the harder it is for the octave effect to track your note (just like the OC-2). Have your guitarist friends try this time for deep down chunk-a chunk-a chunk.

POD EFFECTS: POD ONBOARD EFFECTS

Analog Chorus - This Chorus was massaged to closely approximate the classic tone of an old Roland CE-1 box. The Effect Tweak knob spins you through a range of chorus settings from subtle to extreme. Lower settings remind us of the type of chorus Sting sometimes used on his bass with the Police, while higher settings will get you the Nirvana Come As You Are effect.

Danish Chorus - More modern in its personality and ﬂavor, this is our Model of

the t.c. electronics SCF Stereo Chorus / Flanger pedal. The Effect Tweak knob spins you through a range of chorus settings from light to down right soupy.

Orange Phase - Our Phaser model is based on the phaser that changed the

world – the MXR Phase 90. The Phase 90 is relatively subtle compared to other phasers, and becomes part of the overall tone. Its lush, organic, and groovy swirl can be heard all over records made in the 70’s, and again in the 90’s. The Phase 90 is a ﬁne example of simplicity; its single knob controls only speed. Our model stays true to the original, with the Effect Tweak giving you the range of Phase 90 tones.

Gray Flanger - Flanging is that familiar “jet-plane” whoosh you remember from

recordings of the 70’s. Originally the effect was used rarely, mostly because engineers had to use ﬁnger pressure on one of the tape reels so they could slow down and speed up the tape in tiny increments to get this effect. Since the part of the tape reel they pressed on is called the ﬂange, you can see how the effect got its name. As soon as someone ﬁgured out how to get this effect electronically, it was no longer rare and was probably used a little too much for the next several years.

Gray Flanger is our model of the classic MXR Flanger, a very warm-sounding ﬂanger, featuring a bucket brigade analog circuit design, as well as a very uniquely shaped waveform. The Effect Tweak knob gives you a range of Flanger effects from just a bit to Holy Cow!

6 • 3

POD EFFECTS: POD ONBOARD EFFECTS

Tron Down & Up - What self-respecting bass vünderbox would be without

a MuTron III envelope follower? Part auto-wah, part triggered ﬁlter, this effect is all about Bootsy, and your POD gives it to you both coming and going! Go ahead, un-button that shirt, put on the ﬂares, and get down with your bad self. You’ve got your choice of Tron Down and Tron Up, to get both ﬂavors of this effect a la the original MuTron’s up/down switch. Effect Tweak sets the Peak of the modeled MuTron ﬁlter to vary the tone. With this effect active, we’ve set up the wah pedal of the optional Floor Board to also vary this peak, rather than providing a separate wah effect (since the Tron effect is already giving you the wah-type thing).

S & H - Modeled after a vintage Oberheim Voltage Controlled Filter (which is

an example of a Sample & Hold effect). Play long sustained notes and hear them

6 • 4

“dance” with this ﬁlter. Effect Tweak controls the speed of the dancing ﬁlter.

S & H + Flanger - Little bit of Sample Hold, with a little bit of Gray

Flanger, for a whole lotta dancing, whooshing goodness. Effect Tweak controls Sample & Hold speed.

S & H + Danish Driver - Matches up the Sample & Hold effect with the

soon-to-be-described Danish Driver. Effect Tweak sets Sample & Hold speed.

Bass Synth - We started with a Boss Bass Synth pedal, and added a bit of our

own magic for this one. Effects Tweak works like the Decay knob to give the effect a tight cut off, or let it ring out a bit and fade. Dial up an overdriven Amp Model, then add this effect to give the Moog player ﬁts! By the way, the wah pedal (available on POD’s optional Floor Board foot controller) doesn’t do wah when you’ve got the Bass Synth effect selected. Instead, it controls the decay (just as the Effect Tweak knob) to let you pedal in a little bit of character for your synth effect.

POD EFFECTS: POD ONBOARD EFFECTS

Danish Driver - Modeled after of a t.c. electronics Booster Line Driver +

Distortion, for smooth distortion, from subtle to huge. Its character comes from a massive bass boost at 100Hz or so. Effects Tweak sets the amount of distortion.

Large Pie - That’s a model based on the Big Muff Pi to you and me. This is the

place to turn for classic fuzzy bass, brighter than the Danish Driver. The Large Pie works well with the bass-heavy Amp Models like Brit Major, Brit Class A, and Stadium. Very Smashing Pumpkins. Effects Tweak brings more pie to the party.

Pig Foot - Modeled after the Hogs Foot pedal, which isn’t really a distortion

per se, though distortion is what you use it for. The Hogs Foot is a bass booster and level driver designed to drive the front-end of a tube amp into distortion. Our Pig Foot model gets you into this same territory, great for a warm bass boost with subtle distortion. Effects Tweak controls the amount of added distortion.

6 • 5

Rodent - The Rat is one of those distortion pedals that it seems like everybody

and their brother has used at one time or another. The Rodent model is designed to give you the tone of that beloved box in your beloved Bass POD. Turn up Effects Tweak for harsh buzzsaw bass complete with squealing feedback from all those little mice-ys.

CREATING & STORING SOUNDS: USING THE CHANNEL PROGRAM MEMORIES

CREATING & STORING SOUNDS

USING THE MANUAL MODE FEATURES

When you are using your POD in Manual Mode, all of the controls are active and the sound of POD always reﬂects the knob settings. Sounds just like any ordinary bass amp or pedal, doesn’t it? Who says technology is threatening? You know you’re in Manual Mode, by the way, whenever the Manual button is lit (but you probably already ﬁgured out that part). Play with the knobs until you get a sound that you really like. At this point, you can either follow tradition and put tiny little pieces of tape on POD or mess it all up with grease pencil to mark your favorite settings, or you can take a bold step into new technology and save your sound to one of POD’s memory locations. Which we’re about to tell you how to do in the next section of the manual, appropriately titled…

USING THE CHANNEL PROGRAM MEMORIES

7 • 1

So, there you are with a sound that you really like – wouldn’t it be nice to be able to call it up any time you want it? That’s simple once you have it stored into one of the 36 POD channel memory locations. How do you do it? Just press the Save button . It will start to ﬂash. Press the Up and Down buttons and you will see that you are switching through memory locations A, B, C, and D in each of POD’s nine numbered banks. Pick one to store your sound in, and press that Save button a second time. The light will stop ﬂashing, and the sound is stored at the location you chose, replacing the sound that was stored there before. Doesn’t get much simpler than that. After the sound is stored, you can bring it back any old time by simply pressing the Up and Down buttons to call up the location where you stored it. (See Chapter 7 to learn how to do all this with your feet on the Floor Board). If you decide that you don’t want to store the sound after you’ve got all the lights blinking, pressing the Manual or Tuner or MIDI buttons will abandon the save. (Save mode will also be canceled if you don’t press any buttons for 5 seconds after having pressed Save.)

CREATING & STORING SOUNDS: TONETRANSFER

TONETRANSFER

POD Sounds on the Web

Your POD gives you access to a constantly-expanding world of sounds. We’re building a ToneTransfer Web Library at www.line6.com where you’ll ﬁnd a growing collection of sounds for your POD, created by Line 6 users around the world. The SoundDiver software included on the CD with this manual will help you store, organize, and transfer your sounds.

Swapping POD Channels With Friends

OK, so you go over to a friend’s house who also had the good taste and intelligence to buy a Bass POD or Bass POD Pro. This friend has created an awesome sound

7 • 2

that’s stored in the Bank 1, Channel A location. You’ve got to have this sound so you can write the song that’s going to make you rich, but your friend forgot to make a copy of the Sound Programmer’s Sheet on the back of the POD manual and write down his settings. (Perhaps we can learn a valuable lesson from this: always back up your work!) Do you have to give up your dreams of rock and roll success and spend the rest of your life cleaning bird cages to pay the bills? Luckily, we thought this one through in advance. We provided you with a way to get those settings. Just press and keep holding the Save button on your friend’s POD and turn any one of the POD’s knobs (except the Output Level knob – that one’s not saved into programs). Don’t worry, holding down the Save button won’t cause your settings to be altered or cause Save Mode to be entered. Instead, you’ll notice one of the little arrows below the Tuner button will light up. The arrow tells you which way to turn the knob so that it will match the stored memory’s setting for that control. When the knob position exactly matches the stored setting, the arrows will both light up. (The Amp Model and Effects knobs don’t give you the left or right arrows on their own; they will only light the two arrows together when you have the knob in the right place.) After you’ve done this for every knob and noted the Apply FX to DI state, you can write down the settings on the

CREATING & STORING SOUNDS: EDIT MODE

Programmer’s sheet, take it home, enter it in your own POD, and write the anthem for a future (or past) generation. And be sure to thank us in the album’s liner notes. To check that you’ve got everything just right, once the knobs are set, you can also switch to Manual Mode and see if the sound changes.

If that sounds too complicated, and you have a MIDI cable handy, ﬂip ahead to Chapter 8: “Deep Editing & MIDI Control” to ﬁnd out how to swap sounds between two PODs with MIDI. It’s also possible to swap POD sounds on computer, using the emagic SoundDiver software – for both Macintosh and Windows computers – that’s included on the CD with this manual.

EDIT MODE

Alright, so let’s say you’ve got that sound you saved in one of POD’s handy channels, and you want to add some more Bass. No problem. If you haven’t already selected the memory you want, then go ahead and get on those Up and Down buttons to recall the sound. Now, grab the Bass knob and crank it up. The word “EDITED” lights up to the left of POD’s single-digit display, letting you know that you’ve made a change to your stored channel memory, and (if you like it better that way) you should use the Save button to save it. This is what’s called Edit Mode since you’ve done just that: edited a stored channel. To commit your edit to POD’s memory, press Save and it will start to ﬂash. Press it a second time, and the sound will be stored into the currently selected memory. If you want to choose a different memory location for the save, then use the Up and Down buttons once you’ve got Save ﬂashing and pick the memory you want.

7 • 3

If you don’t want to save your edit, that’s OK, too – just ignore the Save button. If you decide not to save after pressing Save, you can touch the Manual, Tu n e r , or MIDI button to abandon saving. Keep in mind that if you switch to another channel without saving your edit, all your sound changes made during that edit will be forgotten.

CREATING & STORING SOUNDS: CUSTOMIZING AMP MODELS & EFFECTS

CUSTOMIZING AMP MODELS & EFFECTS

Because we were thing of you, we made it possible for you to customize the settings that are called up by the Amp Models and Effects knobs. Using this powerful new feature, you can pack your POD with all the special sound genius that only you possess, and have this brilliance available instantly at the turn of a single knob. Here’s how it works:

About Customization Mode

Hold (and keep holding) the Save button, then press the Manual button. The Save, Manual, A, and B lights will all start a-ﬂashing (and you can let go of those

buttons now). You have entered the Customization Mode where you get to put your very own stamp on the settings called up by the Amp Models and Effects knobs.

7 • 4

To understand how this Customization works, we’ll start with an explanation of what happens when you turn the Amp Models and Effects knobs:

Turning the Amp Models knob picks an Amp Model, and turning the Effects knob picks an effect, right? Actually, each of these knobs is setting a number of parameters behind the scenes.

CREATING & STORING SOUNDS: CUSTOMIZING AMP MODELS & EFFECTS

When you pick an Amp Model, POD sets the following controls to values determined by the Amp Models knob:

Controls affected by the Amp Models Knob

Amp Model Drive Bass Middle Treble Chan Vol Cabinet Model Post-Model EQ Frequency Post-Model EQ Shape Post-Model EQ Gain Amp Model Mid Sweep Digital Out Level D.I. Time Alignment Compressor Threshold (set by Compress Knob) Compressor Ratio* Noise Gate On/Off Noise Gate Decay * Volume Pedal Minimum * Volume Pedal Location (before or after the Amp Model) * Wah Minimum * Wah Maximum *

7 • 5

*You only get access to these extra controls via the SoundDiver software or MIDI.

In the same way, turning the Effects knob sets all the parameters related to the effect you choose.

Customization allows you to store your own personal favorite adjustments for all these parameters so they live on the 16 positions of the Amp Models and Effects

CREATING & STORING SOUNDS: CUSTOMIZING AMP MODELS & EFFECTS

knobs. This way, when you turn the Amp Models knob to the Stadium position, you’ll get your personal Stadium, with all the controls in the list above set for your very own version of the Stadium. Same thing for the Effects – your Chorus, Bass Synth, etc. is always just one knob click away.

So where is stuff going to be saved, exactly? If you’re customizing the Amp Model, then you’ll be saving to the knob position of the selected Amp Model. For instance, if your sound uses the Brit Major, and you do the Customized Save of the Amp settings, you will now get those settings whenever you turn the knob to the Brit Major position. Alternatively, if your sound uses the Jazz Tone, then doing the Customized Save will save your settings there. Your POD will choose the correct place to store the information regardless of the present physical position of the Amp Models encoder – so don’t worry, you can’t accidentally copy your California settings to the Flip Top position. Same deal goes for the effects; your POD knows whether you’re using Flanger or Rodent or whatever, and will save to that knob position.

7 • 6

So what if you’re not sure which Amp Model or effect you are using right now, and want to ﬁnd out before you make your Customization? That’s easy, too:

Just press (and keep holding) the Save button and turn the Amp Models or Effects knob. Once you have them in the right position, both the arrows for the tuning indicator will light up.

So, now that you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into, lets get to it:

Activating Customization Mode

The ﬁrst thing to do is get an Amp or Effect setting that you really like and want to store to the Amp Models or Effects knob. This amp or effect setting can come from a factory preset, one of your own edits, a sound you downloaded off the web, or a sound you’ve tweaked up in SoundDiver. Whatever its source, all you have to do is get that sound into your POD so it’s active and you’re playing though it.

CREATING & STORING SOUNDS: MEMORY RESET

With that done, you’ll hold (and keep holding) the Save button, then press the Manual button. The Save, Manual, A and B lights will all start a-ﬂashing (and

you can let go of those buttons now). You have entered the Customization Mode. If you use the Up/Down buttons to select A now, you will instruct your POD that you want to save your present Amp settings to live on the Amp Models knob. If you select B, your POD will understand that you want to save your current effects setting to the Effects knob. And then you’ll press the Save button to ﬁnalize your choice. Got it? Here are the steps in handy list form:

1. Get an amp or effect you love happening on your POD.

2. Hold Save, and press Manual. Save, Manual, A, and B lights ﬂash.

3. Use Up/Down arrows to select A (Amps) or B (Effects).

4. Press Save to complete the deed.

7 • 7

MEMORY RESET

If, for any reason, or just for the sheer mad joy of it, you decide you need to reset your POD’s memory to its factory-programmed state, hold down the Up and Down buttons as you turn on the power. That’ll blow your POD’s memory and reset it just like it was when it left the Line 6 factory.

Warning: This will erase ALL the channels, as well as the custom amp and effect

settings you might have created. So be sure and ask yourself “Do I really want to do

this?” If the answer is yes, go on ahead with your bad self.

THAT’S USING YOUR FEET: FLOOR BOARD

THAT’S USING YOUR FEET

You really get the most out of your Bass POD with a foot controller. Two different foot controllers can be used: Line 6’s

FLOOR BOARD

Using the Floor Board with POD lets you access many features that are not available otherwise. This all-steel chassis, oh-so-stylish foot control wonder gives you plenty of stuff: A volume pedal. A wah pedal with a Crybaby-style toe-down on/off switch so you can kick the wah effect in and out at any time. Master Effects on/off control of your POD’s effects. Channel switching. Plus Tuner control.

If you haven’t already discovered the back panel foldout, get set for a surprise. If you have, go ahead and jump to the next paragraph. Still here? Alright – ﬂip to the inside back cover of this manual. Hmm, looks like the cover is all folded up. Unfold it, and hey, presto! It’s your very own POD road map. The idea is to have this handy pictorial reference always opened out while you’re breezing through this manual and becoming an expert on all things POD. The boxed numbers throughout the following text refer to the fold out illustration.

Floor Board and FB4.

8•1

Getting Connected

So, how’s that Floor Board work, exactly? Well, the very ﬁrst thing is to plug it into your POD with the handy cable that came with your Floor Board. We recommend you turn your POD off ﬁrst, but you do whatever you feel like – it’s your amp! Then, plug in your bass, turn on your POD (scared you, didn’t we?) and just press that Volume Pedal on the far right side of the Floor Board all the way forward so you can hear something.

THAT’S USING YOUR FEET: FLOOR BOARD

Effect On/Off

The ﬁrst thing to know is that the Floor Board is designed to work with a variety of Line 6 products. Besides your Bass POD Pro, it also works with our guitar POD, POD Pro, and ampliﬁers. The main thing about all this that matters to you is that the switch at the top left of the Floor Board chooses between two modes on our guitar products: Channel Select Mode, and Effects On/Off Mode. With your Bass POD Pro, this switch simply works as the Effects On/Off control, letting you toggle your pre-programmed effects on or... you guessed it – off.

Banks

The two left-most stomp switches on the bottom row ( on your handy back cover foldout Floor Board diagram) are labeled Bank Down and Bank Up. A Bank is a section of POD memory that holds four channel settings. The POD has nine memory banks total. These memory locations come pre-loaded with some tasty little tones created at Line 6, but you can change them into whatever you want, and store those changes back into one of the memory locations. You know which Bank you’ve got because the Floor Board’s display will show you the same thing as your POD.

8•2

The Floor Board notes that you can press the Bank Up & Down buttons at the same time to switch between Preset and User Banks. This only applies to some of our guitar ampliﬁer products, not to POD.

Channel Select

So, now that we’ve got this whole Bank thing down, let’s move onto the other four switches on the bottom row. These let you pick which of the four channels – A, B, C, or D – you want to use in the bank you’ve selected. Pick your Bank , hit one of the Channel Select switches , and you’re ready to roll.

THAT’S USING YOUR FEET: FLOOR BOARD

Manual Mode

Hey, what about Manual Mode? Don’t worry – you can get there any time. Let’s say you have a particular Channel selected. The channel’s corresponding light is lit above its Floor Board Channel Select switch, right? OK, step on this switch a second time and hold it for at least a second. Boom! You'll ﬁnd yourself transported directly to Manual Mode. The Floor Board display will show a zero. To get back out of Manual Mode, press either Bank Up or Bank Down foot switch and you’ll be switched right back to wherever you were when you entered.

Editing and Saving POD Channels with the Floor Board

The basic story on editing the programmable POD channels is in the POD Effects Chapter. With a Floor Board you’ll ﬁnd that the display will show an

E (for “Edited”) whenever you’ve edited a channel. It will display an S (Save) if you press the Save button on your POD in preparation for saving a channel. When you decide you want to save an edited channel, you can select any of the locations via the Floor Board as your destination. Here’s how:

1. EDIT A CHANNEL’S SETTINGS TO YOUR LIKING.

RESS THE SAVE BUTTON ON YOUR POD.

2. P

3. PICK THE MEMORY BANK YOU WANT TO STORE TO WITH THE BANK UP AND BANK DOWN SWITCHES ON THE FLOOR BOARD.

4A.ON YOUR POD, PICK THE CHANNEL MEMORY LOCATION (A, B, C, OR D) YOU WANT

TO SAVE TO WITHIN THE SELECTED BANK, AND

5. PRESS THE SAVE BUTTON TO COMMIT YOUR MASTERPIECE TO YOUR POD’S MEMORY.

8•3

O 4B.SKIP 4A AND 5, AND JUST KICK YOUR CHOSEN FLOOR BOARD CHANNEL SELECT

SWITCH TWICE TO SAVE INTO THAT CHANNEL.

THAT’S USING YOUR FEET: FLOOR BOARD

Tap Tempo

The Tap Tempo button on the Floor Board can be used to take over the timingcontrol centers of the brains of unruly drummers and guitar players that insist on slaughtering your latest groove with their sloppy sense of time. Just tap here and Vulcan mind pulses will be sent out to your bandmates’ brains to put them under your tempo control. If you’re still reading this, take a deep breath... WE’RE KIDDING! The Tap Tempo function really controls the speed of delay and other effects with some of our other products. With Bass POD, the true function of this

switch is....

Tuner

Yep, that’s what this switch is actually for. Really. Hold that puppy down for a second or more and – shazam! Instant digital chromatic tuner. All POD’s Amp Model and effects processing are bypassed so you can hear those questionablytuned strings clearly, should you choose to do so. If you’d rather appear more professional, don’t worry; the volume pedal still works. Play a note on your bass and the Floor Board will show you what it is in that handy display . Play that string again, spin its tuning key so it goes sharp and ﬂat, and the six LEDs above

8•4

the bottom row of Floor Board switches give you a light show. The idea is that the LEDs to the left light if you’re ﬂat. The LEDs to the right light if you’re sharp. And the two LEDs in the center will light at the same time when you’ve got it just right. Give any one of the Floor Board’s switches a stomp and the tuner disappears just as swiftly as it came and you’re right back to Channel Select Mode. What if you want to tune to a different reference than A=440Hz? When you’re in the tuner mode, turn the Middle knob on your POD while watching the display on the Floor Board. Hey, it changes! You can set the reference frequency anywhere from 436445Hz. This setting is stored so you don’t have to reset it every time you turn on the amp if you decide you want to be different (or if that piano in your rehearsal room has decided to be different).

THAT’S USING YOUR FEET: FLOOR BOARD

Wah Pedal

So how about that wah pedal? It’s the one on the left . Get yourself planted with your foot on there nice and comfortable. Now, press down with your toes, let go, and do it again. You should see a little light turning on and off to the left of the wah pedal. When the light’s on, the wah’s on. When the light’s off, the wah’s off. Neat. Incidentally, the POD wah is modeled after a late 60’s Vox wah (retuned especially for bass), with plenty of “growl” in the heel back position. Now then, turn the wah light on, switch to the Rock Classic Amp Model, set your Drive to about 5, and do a little funky playing while you rock back and forth to the beat on that pedal. Hang a disco ball, unbutton your shirt to your navel (assuming you don’t have it that way all the time), hang some gold chains around your neck, and get ready to party! You can do subtle things with the wah pedal too, like turning it on just a tiny bit and leaving it there, just barely caressing your sound. But then, that’s not as much fun as playing the theme to “Shaft,” is it?

By the way, when you’re using the Tron Up or Tron Down effects, the wah pedal is used to adjust the character of these effects, rather than controlling a separate wah effect, because the Mu-Tron is basically an auto-wah ﬁlter thingy.

Also, when you’re using the Bass Synth effect, the wah pedal controls the decay of the synth instead of a wah effect.

Volume Pedal

Not nearly as fun as the wah pedal, but arguably more useful (and it doesn’t require you to have Very Large Hair to use it convincingly). Put your foot up on that thing . It’s the one on the far right. Press the volume pedal forward with your toes for loud, and back with your heel for quiet. The volume pedal is tapered for a very musical swell. It starts out slow and then gets faster as you move your toe down, very much like an Ernie Ball volume pedal.

8•5

THAT’S USING YOUR FEET: FLOOR BOARD

Effect On/Off Settings Stored With Programmed Channels

OK, this part’s mostly for the people who fret about all the little details that make other people think, “Wow, you’re way too concerned about all the little details!” What happens if you turn the effects off or on and then you save your sound into one of your POD memories? The effect on/off status gets stored, too. Cool. Now, what happens when you decide to head over to your friends’ house to show them how cool your POD is, and you jump on your bike, and decide taking the Floor Board along is too much hassle, so you leave it behind, pump the pedals with your POD bouncing along in its attractive Line 6 carry bag, strut into your friends’ place trying not to look like you’re out of breath, plug in your POD, recall your FAVORITE sound from the handy channel select buttons, go to play that incredibly classic-sounding Ultimate Flanger tone that you know is going to have your friends turning pale and quivery with envy, even if they do think you're too concerned about all the little details, and then it hits you – you turned the effects off from the Floor Board and stored the channel like that. Feel foolish, don’t you? Let that be a lesson – never leave your Floor Board behind. Especially when there are friends to impress. But we hate to see you suffer. So here’s how to save your bacon: just grab the Effect Tweak knob and give it a spin. Magically, your ﬂanger is back to make you a hero once again. That’s because the effect’s on/off

8•6

status is overridden if you tweak that effect’s setting. So Flanger on/off comes on when you move the Effect Tweak knob to change your Flanger setting. But only if the Floor Board’s not connected. See? A bunch of little details. Getting a headache, aren’t you? The important thing is, if you save channels with effects on or off and then you don’t have your Floor Board, no worries – we’ve made sure it doesn’t cause you problems. That’s it for the Floor Board section. Fun, wasn’t it?

THAT’S USING YOUR FEET: FB4: SIMPLE FOOT CONTROL FOR POD

FB4: SIMPLE FOOT CONTROL FOR POD

The FB4 gives you basic control over channel switching with POD. We tried to make it as simple as possible. Turn off your POD. Connect the FB4 to your POD with the thoughtfully-included connection cable. Turn on your POD. Select Channel A, B, C, or D by pressing the appropriate button on the FB4. The channel’s light will be lit to indicate that the channel is selected. If you press and hold down the button below the light for about a second, your POD will switch to Manual Mode. And ﬁnally, if you unplug the FB4 from your POD and tap on one of its switches, nothing will happen.

Note: The FB4 is always selecting sounds from the currently chosen POD Bank. Use the Up/Down arrows on your POD to select a different bank.

8•7

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: MIDI BASICS

DEEP EDITING & MIDI CONTROL

MIDI BASICS

What’s MIDI?

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a communications protocol designed to let various music-making machines exchange information. It allows one device to control another, and several devices to all be used together in coordination.

In/Out

POD has two MIDI connections: In & Out. You connect POD to other MIDI devices by connecting MIDI cables to these connections. Each connection is a one-way street: information ﬂows from the OUT of one device to the IN of another device. To allow information to ﬂow back, you must connect a second cable, from IN to OUT.

9•1

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: MIDI BASICS

MIDI Channel

MIDI allows 16 different channels of information to be transmitted and received through one MIDI cable. The MIDI channel is independent of, and has nothing to do with, POD’s channels for storing individual sound programs.

You tune POD in to listen to a particular MIDI channel (like choosing a channel on a TV or a station on a radio), and make sure the device that you want POD to listen to is transmitting on that same MIDI Channel. To set POD’s MIDI channel, press the MIDI button (which will light up). The single-digit display will show you the channel POD is currently tuned in to. Use the Up and Down arrows to select a different MIDI channel. POD will display channels 10–16 by lighting up the decimal point to the right of the single digit. So “2.” means channel 12.

You can also set POD to listen to all channels (Omni mode) by selecting A (A for all) for the MIDI channel. When in Omni mode, POD will transmit on MIDI channel 1.

MIDI Messages

MIDI allows several different kinds of messages, each with a different purpose:

9•2

MIDI Program Changes - Program change messages tell a device to switch from

one sound or setup to another. With POD, program changes change from one channel to another. So, for instance, when POD receives program change number 1, it will select Bank 1, Channel A. When it gets program change number 2, it will select Bank 1, Channel B. And so on, as the chart in Appendix C shows.

MIDI Controllers - MIDI controller messages allow you to control a device’s parameters in real time. So, for instance, you can use a MIDI controller to vary the setting the of the POD Drive control, or the Compressor level. Each of POD’s parameters are mapped to a MIDI controller, so you can take full control of your POD. The chart in Appendix D lists each POD parameter, the controller assigned to it, and how that controller affects POD. Note that the wah and

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: MIDI BASICS

volume pedals of the Floor Board also transmit MIDI controller messages via MIDI when used with your POD. To minimize “zipper” noise when controlling

parameter changes via MIDI, try making gradual, rather than sudden changes to POD settings.

MIDI Sysex Commands - Sysex stands for “System Exclusive.” Sysex

commands are special commands that only a particular device understands – they are ‘exclusive’ to that device – as opposed to the more generic kind of program, controller, and other messages that almost all MIDI devices understand. POD uses Sysex to transmit the sounds that are programmed in its memory to another device, or to receive new sounds from another device. This exchange of data is typically called a “dump.” The emagic SoundDiver software included on your POD Tools CD uses Sysex commands to dump POD programs to your computer for backup and editing, and to send programs from your computer to POD. The following sections tell you how all this works.

9•3

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: TRANSFERRING SOUNDS BETWEEN BASS PODS

TRANSFERRING SOUNDS BETWEEN BASS PODS

Imagine this: you’ve had your Bass POD for a while now, and you’ve become quite the “bass tone” sound design wizard. Soon, all of your bass playing friends – and even your bass idols – are calling asking if you they can get access to your brilliant sounds. Being the generous wizard you are, you consent and invite them for an audience with your POD. You’ll need a standard MIDI cable, and they will need a Bass POD. (Your genius cannot be transferred to a regular guitar POD.) Let the sound transfers begin!

Connect the MIDI OUT of your POD to the MIDI IN of the receiving Bass POD. Press the MIDI button on your POD and check to see what MIDI channel it is set to. Use the Up and Down buttons to set it to the same channel that the receiving Bass POD is expecting. Or alternatively, change the receiving POD to match your POD MIDI channel – whichever ya wanna do is just ﬁne, so long as they both end up talking on the same MIDI Channel.

Transferring All Sounds - To dump all the programmed sounds from one POD to another, make sure that the transmitting POD’s MIDI button is lit up, and press its SAVE button. The POD’s single digit display will say “A” which means send All sounds via MIDI, and the Save button will ﬂash as if to say, “press me again to start sending.” Now, if you do press Save a second time, the entire memory of your POD will be dumped to the receiving Bass POD. Pressing any other button on POD will abort the transfer.

9•4

Transferring Only Some Sounds - To transfer only one or more individual

sounds from one POD to another, here’s the procedure. Start by having POD in normal operating mode (no MIDI button lit), and selecting the sound you want to transfer. You can make edits to it if you like; the POD is about to transfer whatever settings you make active. So, once you’ve got the sound you want, press MIDI. Now press Save. Use the Up button to change from “A” to “1” which means you only want to transfer ONE sound to the receiving MIDI recorder. Press Save again to make the transfer, or press anything else to abort. If you want to send another single sound, select it on your POD, and press MIDI, then Save, then Up. Press

Save on POD to execute the dump. And poof! Your a wizard’s trick is complete.

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: BACKING UP POD PROGRAMS TO OTHER DEVICES

BACKING UP POD PROGRAMS TO OTHER DEVICES

It’s recommended that you backup the sounds programmed into your POD so that you can restore them in case of some future disaster. If you want to transfer sounds from POD to some other MIDI device for backup (like say a MIDI ﬁle player or a hardware sequencer or keyboard workstation), things work pretty much the same way as they do for Bass POD-to-Bass POD transfers. But we’ll spell it out anyway. You’ll need a standard MIDI cable to get everybody talking.

Connect the MIDI OUT of your POD to the MIDI IN of the receiving MIDI devices. Press the MIDI button on POD and check to see what MIDI channel it is set to. Use the Up and Down buttons to set it to the same channel that your MIDI device is expecting to receive on. Or alternatively, change your other MIDI device to match the POD MIDI channel – whichever ya wanna do is just ﬁne, so long as they both end up talking on the same MIDI Channel.

Transferring All Sounds - To dump all the programmed sounds from POD to your MIDI recorder, make sure that the POD MIDI button is lit up, and press the POD SAVE button. The POD’s single digit display will say “A” which means send All sounds via MIDI, and the Save button will ﬂash as if to say, “press me again to start sending.” Start your MIDI recorder. Now, if you do press Save a second time, the entire memory of your POD will be dumped to the receiving MIDI device. Pressing any other button on POD will abort the transfer. You also probably have to press STOP on your MIDI recorder once the transfer is complete.

Transferring Only Some Sounds - To transfer only one or more individual sounds from POD to your MIDI recorder, here’s the procedure. Start by having POD in normal operating mode (no MIDI button lit), and selecting the sound you want to transfer. You can make edits to it if you like; the POD is about to transfer whatever settings you make active. So, once you’ve got the sound you want, press MIDI. Now press Save. Use the Up button to change from “A” to “1” which means you only want to transfer ONE sound to the receiving MIDI recorder. Start the MIDI recorder going, and then press Save again to make the transfer, or press anything else to abort. Then you probably have to press STOP on your MIDI recorder. If you want to send another single sound, select it on your POD, and press MIDI, then Save, then Up. Set your recorder to receive again. Press Save on POD to execute the dump. And press STOP on your MIDI recorder.

9•5

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: EMAGIC SOUNDDIVER SOFTWARE

EMAGIC SOUNDDIVER SOFTWARE

The Emagic SoundDiver software included on your POD Tools CD is an editor/ librarian program that turns your computer into a POD control station. Check http://www.line6.com for the latest update for this software. SoundDiver lets you store POD sounds on your computer and edit POD sounds on-screen, with access to extra parameters not available when using POD on its own. Included on the CD are installation instructions and an electronic user guide. Please refer to them for instruction, and for information on Emagic’s technical support services.

You will need to have a MIDI interface for your computer in order to use the SoundDiver software. Emagic makes interfaces, as well as a line of software and hardware for music recording that you should check out for use with your POD.

See the Step-By-Step with SoundDiver section later in this chapter for an introduction to using the SoundDiver software, as well as the SoundDiver Troubleshooting section.

Emagic can be reached in the U.S. by phone at (530) 477-1051, or at their German headquarters: +49 4101 495-0. They’re also on the internet at http://www.emagic.de, and can be emailed at info@emagic.de – U.S. customers

9•6

note that the web and email addresses are “.de” not “.com” because Emagic is headquartered in Germany. A list of Emagic distributors is under the Apple Menu in the SoundDiver Macintosh software Mac. If you’re using Windows, this list is available from the Welcome Window when you start up SoundDiver, or from the

Help Menu > Emagic Distributors....

MIDI interfaces are also made by Mark of the Unicorn (www.motu.com), MIDI Man (www.midiman.com) and others.

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH MIDI

OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH MIDI

In addition to using the Emagic SoundDiver software on the POD Tools CD to edit and store POD sounds, MIDI also gives you what you need for:

Changing POD Channels with MIDI Program Changes

The most basic thing to do with POD via MIDI is change channels. You may have a foot controller or other device that sends MIDI program change messages. Hook its MIDI OUT to POD’s MIDI IN, set the MIDI Channels of both devices to be the same, and refer to the chart in Appendix C to see what program number on the foot controller will select which POD Channel. Note that both Manual Mode and the Tuner can be selected with MIDI Program Change messages. You can also send MIDI Program change messages to POD from a MIDI sequencer to allow you to change POD sounds automatically in sync with your sequences.

Tweaking POD Tones with MIDI Controllers

If you have a hardware MIDI “fader box,” assignable MIDI controllers on a keyboard, or a stand-alone or computer software-based MIDI sequencer, you can take control of any POD parameter via MIDI. The chart in Appendix D lists which POD parameter is controlled by which MIDI Controller. Remember to make sure that the MIDI Channels have been set properly when ﬁrst setting up your POD with the gear that will control it.

9•7

Full MIDI Automation of POD

When you use POD with a MIDI sequencer, you can automate any POD parameter using MIDI Controller messages. This allows POD to give you the same kind of capabilities as Line 6’s acclaimed Amp Farm software plug-in software for Pro Tools TDM systems, without the Pro Tools system!

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH MIDI

The POD front panel knobs all send out appropriate MIDI controllers (as do the wah and volume pedals of the optional Floor Board foot controller) that you can record into a MIDI track as you play through your POD along with a MIDI sequence. Follow the Return to Sender hook up instructions in Chapter 3 to set up your audio.

Hook your POD’s MIDI OUT to a MIDI IN on your sequencing setup. Hook a sequencer MIDI OUT to POD’s MIDI IN, and make sure POD and your sequencer are set to the same MIDI Channel.

To allow MIDI-controlled automation, you need to set up a MIDI track in your sequencer to record the data ﬂowing from POD’s MIDI OUT. Set up a MIDI track to receive POD’s MIDI output, record-enable it, and start the sequencer recording. Slowly turn POD’s Drive knob all the way up and then all the way down as your sequencer records, and then stop your sequencer. Now, look at the data that’s been recorded into the POD MIDI track on your sequencer. You’ll see that you’ve recorded MIDI controller #13 messages. This is the controller that’s assigned to POD’s Drive parameter. Play back the recorded MIDI track as you play through POD (or play back recorded direct guitar audio through POD), and you’ll hear the Drive changes that you recorded into your MIDI track.

9•8

To minimize “zipper” noise when controlling parameter changes via MIDI, try making gradual, rather than sudden changes to POD settings.

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: STEP-BY-STEP WITH SOUNDDIVER

STEP-BY-STEP WITH SOUNDDIVER

As we mentioned in this chapter’s earlier section on SoundDiver, you will need to have a MIDI interface for your computer in order to use the SoundDiver software with your POD. MIDI interfaces are made by Emagic (www.emagic.de) which is the company that makes the SoundDiver software. MIDI interfaces are also available from Mark of the Unicorn (www.motu.com), MIDI Man (www.midiman.com) and others. You’ll need to get the MIDI interface hooked up to your computer, and install its associated software to make it run (the Troubleshooting section at the end of this chapter can help with problems you might encounter getting your MIDI interface set up). With the MIDi interface happening, you’re ready to give SoundDiver a go. In the following steps, we’ll show you how to get SoundDiver running, and how to get all the sounds in your POD transferred to the computer:

Step 1 - Hook your POD up to your computer’s MIDI interface. Use both the MIDI IN and MIDI OUT connections for bi-directional communication (so POD can talk to your computer, and the computer can talk to POD). Remember that POD’s OUT connects to the computer’s IN, and the computer’s OUT connects to POD’s IN. Make sure POD is powered on.

Step 2 - We’ve included SoundDiver installers on the accompanying CD. We also strongly recommend that you surf the Support pages at www.line6.com to check for an updated version of the SoundDiver installer.

Run the SoundDiver installer to get SoundDiver installed on your machine. Now, with your POD hooked up to the computer via MIDI and powered on, launch the newly-installed SoundDiver software.

Step 3 - First you’ll see the “splash screen” with Emagic’s contact info, including information on upgrading to the full version of the SoundDiver software. You’ll then get a dialogue box to select English or German (SoundDiver is made by Emagic, a German company).

9•9

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: STEP-BY-STEP WITH SOUNDDIVER

Step 4 (Macintosh) - Then you’ll conﬁgure your ports; make sure you are plugged

into the right port on your mac (Modem, Printer, or USB) and that you’ve checked the box for this port before hitting the OK button in the Preferences dialogue box.

Step 4 (Windows) - SoundDiver will now probably give you a series of dialogue boxes to OK regarding MIDI ports. These will say something like “Port XXXX no longer exists,” and will include an OK button. Typically, you’ll get two dialogues referring to SoundBlaster ports, and eight referring to Unitor ports (the Unitor is a particular MIDI interface). Go ahead and OK all these dialogue boxes, and then

SoundDiver should give you the dialogue box we’re about to describe in step 5....

Step 5 - SoundDiver should now establish communication with your POD (like we said above, make sure you have both MIDI In and MIDI Out connected to allow this), and will give you a dialogue box asking if you’d like to “Request Device’s Memories?” OK this dialogue, and SoundDiver sucks all the sounds out of your POD, and opens them in a window titled “Bass POD”.

9•10

Step 6 - You’ll have a window that looks about

like the one on the left. Don’t worry that the names of the channels (“User Programs”) in your POD are different from what’s shown here. We hadn’t set ﬁnal names at the time this manual was sent to the printer.

Use your mouse to move your on-screen arrow pointer to the User Programs header bar as shown, and click once. The list of all 32 user memories will then be highlighted to show that they are all selected (clicking on the header bar is a handy “select all user memories” command).

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: STEP-BY-STEP WITH SOUNDDIVER

Step 7 (Macintosh) - Now, notice that there are two menus in this window: Entry

and Options. From the Entry menu, choose Save as... > Selected Entries, as shown below:

SoundDiver will give you a standard Save File dialogue box. A pop-up menu at the top of the dialogue box will say “Libraries,” letting you know you are about to save your library to the SoundDiver Libraries folder.

You can click on this “Libraries” pop-up menu to navigate to another place if you want to save this library ﬁle some place else. You can also change the name of your library by typing one here (we recommend something like “Bass POD Sounds”), and then you complete the Save by clicking Save.

9•11

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: STEP-BY-STEP WITH SOUNDDIVER

Step 7 (Windows) - On Windows, the Entry menu is at the top of the screen with

File and the rest of ’em. From it, choose Save as... > Selected Entries. SoundDiver will give you a standard Save File dialogue box. The SoundDiver software’s Libraries folder has been automatically selected for you as the destination for your library ﬁle. You can change the name of your library by typing one here (we recommend something like “Bass POD Sounds”), and then complete the Save by clicking the

Save button.

Step 8 - As a ﬁnal check to make sure

everything went as it should, choose Open from the File menu, and open the library you just saved. You should see a window like the one at the left, listing all 36 of your POD’s memories. Don’t worry that the names

in your window are different from what’s shown here. We hadn’t named set ﬁnal names for the channels at the time this manual was sent to the printer

Congratulations! You’ve now backed up the memory of your POD.

9•12

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: STEP-BY-STEP WITH SOUNDDIVER

A Few Other SoundDiver Tips

We’re done with the tutorial on how to save your sounds to the computer, but we ﬁgured we should give you one or two other tips:

Editing a Channel Memory/Program -

The SoundDiver window shown on the left shows you the contents of your POD’s memory. To edit any one of your POD’s channel memories (SoundDiver calls these “User Programs”), just double-click its name in the list, and you’ll get an editing window.

Transmit/Request -

The “Transmit” and “Receive” commands are available in SoundDiver’s MIDI menu. These commands instruct SoundDiver to Transmit or Receive information to your POD, based on what you have selected in SoundDiver. So, for instance., if you click on one of the channels/programs in the name list of the window above, and then choose the

Transmit command, SoundDiver will understand you want to Transmit this sound to your POD (in other words, the parameters that deﬁne the sound are sent from the computer to POD, so now they both have the same information – what was in the computer has been copied to the POD as well). If you clicked on one of the names in the list, and then chose Request, that would instruct SoundDiver to Request this sound from your POD (in other words, the parameters that deﬁne the sound are sent from POD to the computer, so now they both have the same information – what was in POD has been copied to the computer as well).

9•13

Keep these commands in mind any time your POD and computer don’t seem to be dealing with the same information; you can use Transmit and Request to get your POD and computer back in sync.

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: SOUNDDIVER SETUP TROUBLE-SHOOTING

SOUNDDIVER SETUP TROUBLE-SHOOTING

There are a couple of considerations with SoundDiver and Windows sound card systems. Here are some troubleshooting hints, courtesy of Line 6’s own product support hero, George Van Wagner:

1. SoundBlaster type cards have more than one MIDI driver. The system will usually default to the driver for the built-in synth on the card, rather than the external MIDI port. This means that you must select the correct driver, before SoundDiver can see the POD.

2. MIDI cables must run from out to in and vice versa (don’t connect POD’s MIDI In to your computer’s MIDI In; connect POD’s MIDI In to your computer’s MIDI Out). Think of it in terms of the direction that information is ﬂowing; out of the POD in to the computer. Out of the computer in to the POD.

3. MIDI channels must be set to the same value. The quickest way to ensure communication is to simply set the POD MIDI Channel to A for all (In MIDI-ese, this is known as Omni mode).

9•14

Here are some basic steps to ensure communication with the POD:

1. When you get the dialog box stating that no new device is found, click on the button that says Manually. You will be dropped in the Memory Manager window of SoundDiver.

2. On the left hand side of the Memory Manager window, you will see a list of parameters. Make sure that the Out Port is set to the driver for the External MIDI. As different companies have different driver names, there's no one set name, but the selection should be fairly obvious.

Deep Editing & MIDI Control: SOUNDDIVER SETUP TROUBLE-SHOOTING

3. Make sure that the Device ID is set to 1.

4. On the right hand side of the Memory Manager, click on the title bar that says User Programs. This will highlight all 36 of the user preset locations that are currently blank.

5. Now click on the left-most icon in the upper left of the Memory Manager. It should look like a little keyboard with an arrow coming out of it and a small question mark. This requests the current programs from the POD. At this point, you should see all the patch names ﬁll in, and you’re good to go.

9•15

APPENDIX A: AMP & CAB MODELS

Please note that Fender, Marshall, Vox, and other ampliﬁer model designations, and effects, are all trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or afﬁliated with Line 6. These marks and names are used solely for the purpose of describing certain ampliﬁer tones produced using Line 6’s modeling technology. The Line 6 modeling technology provides POD with a wide variety of sounds and effects modeled after some of the most popular sounds of the classic amps and effects mentioned here.

Model Name Based On Mid Sweep

Amp Models

Tube Preamp Tube Instrument Preamp No Session SWR SM-400 Yes California Mesa/Boogie Bass 400+ No Jazz Tone Polytone Mini-Brute No Adam & Eve Eden Traveller WT-300 Yes Eighties Gallien Krueger 800RB No Stadium Sunn Coliseum 300 Yes Amp 360 Acoustic 360 Yes Rock Classic Ampeg SVT Yes Brit Major Marshall Major No Brit Super Marshall Super Bass No Silver Panel Fender Bassman Amp No Brit Class A Vox AC-100 No Motor City Versatone Pan-O-Flex No Flip Top Ampeg B-15 No Sub Dub When it’s time to go lower than low... Yes

Cabinet Models

Cabs with 10’s 1979 Ampeg SVT 8x10 Cab

Eden “David” 4x10 SWR “Goliath” 4x10 Hartke 4x10

Cabs with 12’s 60’s Versatone Pan-O-Flex 1x12

1968 Marshall 4x12 with “pre-Rola” 25’s

Cabs with 15’s Ampeg B-15 1x15 closed back combo

Polytone 1x15 closed back combo Vox AC-100 2x15 Mesa/Boogie 2x15 (front loaded and front ported) Fender Bassman 2x15 with JBL’s 1969 Marshall Major 4x15 cab (Yeah, baby!)

Cabs with 18’s SWR 1x18

Acoustic 360 cab Sunn Coliseum 8028 cab (1x18 + 1x12)

APPENDIX B: EFFECT PARAMETERS

Effect Tweak Notes

Bypass n/a Turns off the effects.

Octave Down Mix Modeled after the Boss OC-2. HIgher settings give you more

of the octave down effect.

Analog Chorus Range of

Choruses

Danish Chorus Range of

Choruses

Orange Phase Speed Modeled after the MXR Phase 90.

Gray Flanger Range of

Flangers

Tron Down Peak Range Modeled after the Mu-Tron III in the “down” position. The

Tron Up Peak Range Modeled after the Mu-Tron III in the “up” position. The wah

S & H Speed Modeled after the Oberheim Voltage Controlled Filter (for a

S/H + Flanger Sample / Hold

Speed

S/H + Driver Sample / Hold

Speed

Bass Synth Decay Rate Inspired by the Boss Bass Synth – with a bit of extra Line 6

Inspired by the Roland CE-1. From slow and shallow to faster and deeper.

Modeled after the t.c. electronics Chorus/Flanger. From slow and shallow to faster and deeper.

Modeled after the MXR Flanger. From slow and shallow to faster and deeper.

wah pedal varies the Trom effect, rather than a separate wah (since the Tron is a sort of auto-wah).

pedal varies the Tron effect, rather than a separate wah (since the Tron is a sort of auto-wah).

sample & hold effect).

Combines Sample & Hold with Gray Flanger.

Combines Sample & Hold with Danish Driver.

personality.

Danish Driver Distortion Modeled after the t.c. electronics Booster Line Driver +

Distortion. Good for smooth distortion.

Large Pie Distortion Modeled after the Big Muff Pi. Good for fuzz.

Pig Foot Distortion Modeled after the Hogs Foot. Good for warm bass boost.

Rodent Distortion Modeled after the Rat. Good for buzz saw bass and squeal.

APPENDIX C: MIDI PROGRAM CHANGES

POD channels can be selected via MIDI program changes. Some devices number programs starting at zero. Some start at one. We start at zero (Manual Mode) and then work our way along through the stored channels as shown in this table:

POD Channel MIDI Program POD Channel MIDI Program

Bank 1 Bank 6

Channel A 01 Channel A 21 Channel B 02 Channel B 22 Channel C 03 Channel C 23 Channel D 04 Channel D 24

Bank 2 Bank 7

Channel A 05 Channel A 25 Channel B 06 Channel B 26 Channel C 07 Channel C 27 Channel D 08 Channel D 28

Bank 3 Bank 8

Channel A 09 Channel A 29 Channel B 10 Channel B 30 Channel C 11 Channel C 31 Channel D 12 Channel D 32

Bank 4 Bank 9

Channel A 13 Channel A 33 Channel B 14 Channel B 34 Channel C 15 Channel C 35 Channel D 16 Channel D 36

Bank 5

Channel A 17 Manual Mode 00 Channel B 18 Tuner 37 Channel C 19 Channel D 20

Line 6 Bass POD Pro User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

REGISTER AND GET GREAT FREE STUFF!

GET ON-LINE

WELCOME THE POD...

MODELING

AMP & CAB MODELS

THERE’S MAGIC IN THE A.I.R.

LET’S GO OUT...

TONETRANSFER

AND AWAY WE GO....

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS

REAR PANEL CONNECTIONS

LIVE/STUDIO MODE SWITCH

INPUTS

OUTPUTS

RE-AMPING

RADIATION ALERT

LIVE/STUDIO MODE SWITCH

INPUTS

OUTPUTS

PEDAL POWER

POD TAKES OVER

Voicing of the 1/4 inch Model Output

POD Output Level: A Word of Caution

Amp Models

DEEP EDITING

POD ONBOARD EFFECTS

USING THE MANUAL MODE FEATURES

USING THE CHANNEL PROGRAM MEMORIES

TONETRANSFER

POD Sounds on the Web

Swapping POD Channels With Friends

EDIT MODE

CUSTOMIZING AMP MODELS & EFFECTS

About Customization Mode

Activating Customization Mode

MEMORY RESET

Floor Board and FB4.

FB4: SIMPLE FOOT CONTROL FOR POD

MIDI BASICS

TRANSFERRING SOUNDS BETWEEN BASS PODS

BACKING UP POD PROGRAMS TO OTHER DEVICES

EMAGIC SOUNDDIVER SOFTWARE

OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH MIDI

STEP-BY-STEP WITH SOUNDDIVER

SOUNDDIVER SETUP TROUBLE-SHOOTING

APPENDIX A: AMP & CAB MODELS

APPENDIX B: EFFECT PARAMETERS

APPENDIX C: MIDI PROGRAM CHANGES